Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 22.djvu/716

698, and sponges, and upon these his opinion was regarded as of great weight. He was, says "Nature," speaking of his residence at Belfast, "something besides an enthusiastic biologist. . . . By interesting himself not only in what concerned the college, but even in the welfare of the town in which it was located, he soon gathered around him a host of intelligent and warm-hearted friends. In social life, it was but an accident that would reveal the biologist, and one witnessed only the general culture and the artistic taste of a well-bred man."

His associate in the Challenger Expedition, Mr. Moseley, has given, in a notice in the "Academy," a graphic sketch of his personality as it manifested itself during the observations on board the vessel. "His enthusiasm," says Mr. Moseley, "with regard to everything connected with the dredging, sounding, and various physical and chemical operations carried on in the deep sea during the cruise, knew no bounds. He spent hours on deck watching them, and waiting for the dredge to come up, and though, as time wore on, the interest of the seamen and naval officers in the arrival of the dredge or trawl at the surface failed, and that even of the remainder of the scientific staff flagged, he was never known to be absent at the moment it appeared at the ship's side, whatever the weather, but was to be seen peering down into the water, eagerly attempting to diagnose the contents of the net when it was still dipping in and out of the sea-surface as the ship rolled to and fro. When once it was on board, he would eagerly grope for treasures, squeezing each cephalopod between his fingers, always with a lurking hope to find a belemnite's bone in it, or expecting at last to grasp a trilobite. These never came, but there was an abundance of other wonders."

Concluding his sketch, Mr. Moseley says: "Sir Wyville was an excellent lecturer, a most genial companion, and an excellent host. He was fond of amusements of all kinds, and was never happier than when he went on shore from the Challenger in some out-of-the-way island, with his gun on his shoulder, in pursuit of birds-of-paradise, or other treasures."

A fund of five hundred guineas has been raised by subscription for erecting a memorial to Sir Wyville Thomson; with respect to which it has been decided that a bust by Mr. J. T. Hutchinson, R S. A., shall be placed in the University Hall, Edinburgh, and that what is left of the fund shall be devoted to putting a stained-glass window in the church of St. Michael at Linlithgow.