Abstract
THE London Manx Society has issued a report of the meetings held in London on February 13 to celebrate the centenary of the birth of Edward Forbes. The report (” Edward Forbes, Great Manx Naturalist, Botanist, Geologist, Zoologist,” 45 pp., is.) contains an address by Sir Archibald Geikie, Forbes's biographer, on his life and geological work, appreciations of his zoological work by Prof. Ewart, Prof. Mcln-tosh, and Prof. Herdman, and of his botanical work by Prof. Bottomley; also contributions by Prof. Boyd Dawkins, Mr. Whitaker, and Dr. J. W. Evans, a letter by Mr. Ulrich on behalf of the Palæontological Society of the United States, and the words of Forbes's “Dredging Song.” Forbes was born in 1815 in the Isle of Man, and was educated in Edinburgh; in 1841 he was appointed naturalist to H.M.S. Beacon during her survey of the Ægean Sea and coasts of Asia Minor. The following year he became Professor of Botany at King's College, which he held, for part of the time, together with the appointments of Palæontologist to the Geological Survey and Lecturer on Natural History as applied to Geology” at the Royal School of Mines, until his election to the chair of Natural History in Edinburgh in 1854. His death a few months later was, according to Sir Archibald Geikie, “one of the most grievous losses which British science has sustained in our time.” His work was remarkable for its wide range, brilliant originality, and philosophic insight. Huxley wrote of him in 1851 that “he has more claims to the title of a philosophic naturalist than any man I know in England.” Some of his conclusions on the relations of the British flora to fauna were rejected by his contemporaries and immediate successors, but, according to Prof. Mclntosh and Dr. Scharff, they have been established in the main. Mr. E. V. Ulrich, of Washington, reports that Forbes's teaching has “ exerted a profound influence on palæontologists the world over,” that the principles he enunciated now “assume a commanding importance,” and that probably no British author on his subjects has been more followed and quoted in America than Forbes. Forbes was a man of great literary distinction; he was a first-class humorist, and a frequent contributor to Punch; and Sir Joseph Hooker has recorded that owing to his talents and his personality “he was beloved and admired beyond any natural historian of his day.”
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A Manx Tribute to Edward Forbes . Nature 96, 210 (1915). https://doi.org/10.1038/096210b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/096210b0