Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 19.djvu/394

   FORBES, EDWARD (1815–1854), naturalist, son of Edward Forbes, banker, and brother of (1828–1876) [q. v.], was born at Douglas, Isle of Man, on 12 Feb. 1815, and was educated at home and at a day-school at Douglas. He very early displayed marked and widespread tastes for natural history, literature, and drawing. When at school he is described as tall and thin, with limbs loosely hung, and wearing his hair very long. His school-books were covered with caricatures and grotesque figures, and his parents were so impressed by his artistic talent that at the age of sixteen they sent him to London to study art. Being, however, refused entrance to the Royal Academy School, and found not sufficiently promising by his teacher, Mr. Sass, Forbes entered at Edinburgh University in November 1831 as a medical student. While in London he had made his first contribution to the ‘Mirror’ (August 1831), ‘On some Manx Traditions.’ In his first year at Edinburgh he attended Knox's lectures on anatomy, Hope's on chemistry, and Graham's on botany, and became a devoted student of natural history in Jameson's museum and in the country round Edinburgh. At this early period his powers of generalisation and abstraction were as noticeable as his perfect familiarity with natural objects and his varied experimental studies. His peculiar vein of humour showed itself in sketches of the most grotesque kind, and equally broad comic verses. During the vacation of 1832 he investigated the natural history of the Isle of Man. He returned to Edinburgh with a bias against medicine, which turned his note-books into portfolios of caricatures, and he was far more congenially employed in 1834–5 in writing and drawing for the ‘University Maga,’ which he and a few other students brought out weekly from 8 Jan. to 26 March 1835. In this the professors and other prominent persons were severely satirised, and the complete volume was dedicated to ‘Christopher North.’ The death, early in 1836, of his mother, who had particularly wished him to become a physician, left him free to resign medical study. Meanwhile the Maga Club had developed into a ‘Universal Brotherhood of the Friends of Truth,’ whose membership demanded good work already done as well as good fellowship, and the maintenance of a character free from stain. In this society Forbes always continued to take an interest.

Meanwhile Forbes's vacations had been utilised for much natural history work. In the summer of 1833, with his friend Campbell, afterwards principal of Aberdeen University, he went to Norway, sailing from the Isle of Man to Arendal in a brig. Both the voyage and the land trip were occupied with the keenest observation of natural history, and an account of it was given by Forbes in the ‘Magazine of Natural History,’ vols. viii. and ix. The return journey was through Christiania and Copenhagen, and at these places Forbes made several botanical friends. In the summer of 1834 Forbes dredged in the Irish Sea and continued to explore the natural history of the Isle of Man. The results of the dredging appeared in the ‘Magazine of Natural History,’ vols. viii. and ix. In the summer of 1835 he visited France, Switzerland, and Germany, and was so much attracted by the Jardin des Plantes that he resolved to spend the winter of 1836–7 in Paris, studying at the Jardin and attending the lectures of De Blainville and Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire. From their lectures he was much impressed with the necessity of studying the geographical distribution of animals. After this winter he travelled in the south of France and in Algeria, collecting many natural history specimens, on which he based a paper in the ‘Annals of Natural History,’ vol. ii.

In 1837–8 Forbes was back in Edinburgh, working at natural history, bringing out his little volume on ‘Manx Mollusca,’ and taking an active part on behalf of the students in the notable snowball riots of 1838, which were the subject of much of the contents of the revived ‘University Maga’ of 1837–8. He also published, under the title of ‘The University Snowdrop,’ a collection of his songs and squibs on the riots, being especially severe on the town council, who, as patrons of the university, had made themselves obnoxious to the students by calling out the military. Owing largely to Forbes's exertions, the thirty-five students who were arrested were fully acquitted. In the summer of 1838, after a fruitful tour through Austria, during which he collected about three thousand plant specimens, Forbes attended the British Association meeting at Newcastle, read before it a paper ‘On the Distribution of Terrestrial Pulmonifera in Europe,’ and was asked to prepare another on the distribution of pulmoniferous mollusca in the British Isles, which he presented at the succeeding meeting after much original study. After studying the star-fishes of the Irish Sea