Abstract
IT is just a little more than fifty years since H.M.S. Challenger came home, with Wyville Thomson and Moseley aboard, and a young assistant of the name of John Murray. Only a few of our older men remember the fitting-out of that goodly ship, or even her homecoming; but many remember the busy years when naturalists all the world over divided the spoil and shared the harvest of discovery. The quickening impulse of that celebrated expedition lasted long; but in all the past half-century no other ship has sailed from a British port to explore the oceans of the world. The deep sea has been studied here and there so far as scanty opportunities permitted; British home waters have not been neglected, the Indian Ocean has had its turn, and the Discovery expedition is no small thing. But, after all, it is Germany and Norway, and Denmark in particular, that have carried on the work of the Challenger. The Danes have been especially fortunate. In Dr. Johannes Schmidt they have a skilled investigator and a born leader of men. They have a ship, the Dana, built and planned for scientific work, and equipped with every modern device and invention to that end; the Danish Government seems always ready to put her in commission, and the rich Carlsberg Fund is always at hand to defray the heavy cost of a voyage.
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T., D. The Dana Expedition. Nature 122, 999–1001 (1928). https://doi.org/10.1038/122999a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/122999a0