FORBES, EDWARD, a celebrated naturalist. 11e was born In 1815 in the Isle of Man, where his father was a banker. Without any our to direct his taste, he became a naturalist while yet a child. Nothiug delighted hint so much as to pick up the products of the shore of his native island, when as yet ha could hardly read. By the time ho was seven years of ago he had collected a small museum. ilia first cfforta at naming there objects were made through Turtun'a Translation of the Systems Naturm of Linnmus.' Whilst yet a boy of twelve years old he had read Buckland's Dlluvianm: Parkinson's 'Organic Remains,' and Conybeare's Geology of England.' Such was the impression produced on his mind by the perusal of these works, that he ever afterwards attributed his taste for geological research to reading them. His first attempt at original work was the production of a Manual of British Natural History,' which, although it was never published, was the repository of many of his notes even to the close of his life. His habit of drawing the natural history objects which interested him, led him to think of painting as a profession, and with this object in view he studied for some time in the studio of the late Mr. Sass in Charlotte-street, London. This profession did not however comply with his restless desire to study the facts of natural history, and in 1832 he repaired to the University of Edinburgh with the object of studying medicine. Here under the teaching of Professors Jameson and Graham he first became acquainted with the true principles of natural science, and the views and objects of its cultivation. This fired his ambition to become himself an observer and add to the already accumulated stores of natural history facto. It was with this feeling that be started with a fellow-student on an excursion into Norway, where be made numerous observations on the rocks, plants, and Mollusea of the country, and afterwards published the result of his observations in a paper in the 'Magazine of Natural History,' entitled 'Notes of a Natural History Tour in Norway.' At this early period of his natural history career be had recognised the importance of the dredge as an instrument of his research, and in his bands this simple instrument became as powerful a means of research as the telescope to the astronomer. With it he swept the
bottom of the ocean, measured its depths by the character of its inhabitants, and discovered a law for the distribution of marine plants and animals in depth, as strict as the law which regulated their distribution on the altitude of mountains. His early papers, entitled 'Records of the Results of Dredging,' were published in the eighth and ninth volumes of the 'Magazine of Natural History.' Much of his student time was spent upon the sea in the neighbour hood of Edinburgh, and scarcely ever did he make a dredging excursion, so new was the operation to the naturalist, without adding somo new form or species to his increasing collection of natural objects. His attention was not at all however exclusively confined to marine zoology. Plants were always favourite objects, and no student enjoyed more or profited more largely by the botanical excursions of the late Professor Graham. This habit of excursionising lie held constitnted a most important clement in botanical study, at once invigorating the body, and giving the student a knowledge of the relation of plants to other objects which they could not other wise obtain. NA Mist he held the chair of botany at King's College, London, he never neglected periodical excursions with his students. He was mainly instrumental in 1836 in establishing the Botanical Society of Edinburgh, of which be became the foreign secretary. In 1837 he visited Paris, attended the lectures of the professors there, and worked in the museum and collections in the Jardin des Plantes. In the same year he visited Algiers and the coasts of the Mediterranean. In 1838 he published an account of the ' Mollusea of the Isle of Man,' and in 1839 papers on the 'Land and Freshwater Molluscs of Algiers,' and on the 'Distribution of the Pulmonifera of Europe.' In these researches he was laying the foundation for the enlarged views, which be afterwards put forth, with regard to the distribution of the genera and species of animals and plants in time and space.