Scientist of the Day - Edward Forbes

Dredge cartoon, by Edward Forbes, wood-engraved tailpiece  tailpiece to preface of his The Natural History of the European Seas, 1859(Linda Hall Library)

Edward Forbes, a Manx zoologist, died Nov. 18, 1854, at the age of 39.  He was born on the Isle of Man and went to medical school at the University of Edinburgh, where there was a great interest in the zoology of the tidal flats of the Firth of Forth, which is to say, invertebrate zoology, led by Robert Grant.   Forbes made the field his own, and in 1841, he published his first book, A History of British Starfishes, and Other Animals of the Class Echinodermata.

Portrait of Edward Forbes, lithograph by Thomas Macguire, 1850, Wellcome Collection, London (wellcomecollecion.og)         

Many years ago, we published a post on Forbes, where however we talked almost exclusively about the whimsical drawings of Forbes that he used as headpieces and tailpieces for A History of British Starfishes.  All of our images in that post were full-page shots, since we wanted to show what makes a drawing a headpiece or a tailpiece, but that made the drawings very tiny.  So we show here details of two of those sketches. The first depicts a gathering of urchins: a land urchin (hedgehog), a sea urchin, and two human urchins, on the seashore (fourth image).  The second, a tailpiece, shows an imp trying to discourage a clam from swallowing a starfish (eighth image).

Title page, A History of British Star-fishes, by Edward Forbes, 1841 (Linda Hall Library)

Forbes went on to publish a book on another group of invertebrates, the naked-eyed medusae, or jellyfish (fifth image).  Thomas Henry Huxley, just getting started on his career, was also interested in medusae, and the two men became professional acquaintances and friends.  Forbes’ book was sponsored by a new organization that he helped establish, the Ray Society, founded to help authors working in non-popular fields (like invertebrate zoology) get their books published.  The half-title page of the book announced the support of the Ray Society (seventh image).

Three kinds of urchins gathered on the seashore, wood-engraved headpiece by Edward Forbes, in his A History of British Star-fishes, 1841 (Linda Hall Library)

The book on medusae is a large thin quarto, with 13 beautiful hand-colored engravings of various kinds of jellyfish.  We show the top half of one of the plates, so you can appreciate the delicacy of Forbes’ drawings (sixth image).

Title page, A Monograph of the British Naked-Eyed Medusæ, by Edward Forbes, 1848 (Linda Hall Library)

Forbes is known to modern marine biologists as one of the first to make regular use of the dredge, which became the indispensable tool of the invertebrate zoologist (you can see Forbes’ own drawing of a dredge in our first image, from a posthumous work of Forbes).  Forbes also liked to write verse, and in 1840, at the meeting of the British Association of the Advancement of Science in Glasgow, he recited, at a pub gathering, The Song of the Dredge.  I thought you might enjoy the entire three-stanza song.

Hurrah for the dredge, with its iron edge,

And its mystical triangle.

And its hided net with meshes set,

Odd fishes to entangle!

The ship may move thro’ the waves above,

‘Mid scenes exciting wonder,

 But braver sights the dredge delights

As it roves the waters under.

Chorus:  Then a-dredging we will go wise boys. A-dredging we will go!  Etc.

Down in the deep, where the mermen sleep,

Our gallant dredge is sinking;

Each finny shape in a precious scrape

Will find itself in a twinkling!

They may twirl and twist, and writhe as they wist

And break themselves into sections,

But up they all, at the dredge’s call,

Must come to fill collections.

Chorus

The creatures strange the sea that range,

Though mighty in their stations,

To the dredge must yield the briny field

Of their loves and depredations.

The crab so bold, like a knight of old,

In scaly armour plated,

And the slimy snail, with a shell on his tail,

And the star-fish ----- radiated!

Jellyfish, detail of hand-colored engraving, in A Monograph of the British Naked-Eyed Medusæ, by Edward Forbes, plate 1, 1848 (Linda Hall Library)

In the oddest of coincidences, this post on Forbes follows directly on that of Marianne Moore, who looked at the very same undersea world, using a rather different version of the English language from the one possessed by Forbes.

Half-title page, announcing the support of the Ray Society, A Monograph of the British Naked-Eyed Medusæ, by Edward Forbes, 1848 (Linda Hall Library)

Fobes died suddenly in 1854, just as he was about to assume the chair of natural history at Edinburgh.  The small world of invertebrate zoologists, especially Huxley, had a hard time coming to terms with the loss.

An imp trying to save a starfish from the clutches of a clam, wood-engraved tailpiece by Edward Forbes, in his A History of British Star-fishes, 1841 (Linda Hall Library)

William B. Ashworth, Jr., Consultant for the History of Science, Linda Hall Library and Associate Professor emeritus, Department of History, University of Missouri-Kansas City. Comments or corrections are welcome; please direct to ashworthw@umkc.edu.