# Midland Naturalist/Volume 01/Professor Edward Forbes and His Country

Biography of Edward Forbes
Professor Edward Forbes and His Country.
By Robert Garner, F.L.S.
Since any district or hunting-ground which is appropriated to the study of natural history loses much of its productiveness and interest if it does not embrace a portion of the seaboard, or, at any rate, if there is no occasional excursion made with the object of studying marine zoology and botany, the following paper relating to one portion of the Isle of Man may not he out of place in the "Midland Naturalist," especially as its coasts, together with those of North Wales, are more easily accessible to Midlanders than any others, and the island is especially rich in all marine productions, whether botanical or zoological.
When the writer of this paper saw for the first time the still-regretted Naturalist whose name occurs at the head of it, he could not fail to be struck with his intellectual appearance, juvenile look, expressive eyes, and somewhat truant hair. This was in 1839, as he spoke in his section at the meeting of the British Association at Birmingham, the year and place, we think, which gave birth to the Red Lion Club, consisting of himself and other congenial spirits. His then auditor, who was also his senior, little expected that so many years after his death, (which took place in 1854,) circumstances which may be termed fortuitous would bring it about that himself, with tastes not very different from those of poor Forbes, should become acquainted with the family estate, and be domiciled for a time at the homestead which belonged to him; also hear his praise from the worthy old Manxman who accompanied him in his rambles and dredgings; to whom, as to all with whom ho had intercourse, he became much endeared, The old man recounted, amongst other things, with what glee Forbes found a rare Arca (tetragona) in the mud which filled the valves of a Modiola; his gourmandise in respect to the raw mollusks of the scallops, (called tanrogans by the natives;) his long and lithe fingers allowing nothing to escape them; and the interest he took in a beetle which the narrator brought to him — three-spined, and which burrowed in the roads—probably a Typhews or bull-comber, (Anglice.)
​Edward Forbes was born at Douglas, in 1815, and was consequently but thirty-nine at his death, His mother was the heiress of Corvallo and Bullabog, near Ballangh, He was of a stock not only adventurous, but speculative, on the male side. In the wreck of the family estates, which had become involved previous to his succession to them, he only succeeded in saving a portion—that above alluded to. The old parish church is close at hand, a mile at least from the village, but is now a disused and picturesque edifice; the surrounding enclosure contains one of the Runic memorial stones so general in the island; but a more interesting stone, at least to the naturalist, many be seen in the otherwise uninteresting modern church, a tablet raised in 1858, principally through the aid, we believe, of Sir R. I. Murchison and other scientific friends, to the memory of the professor, the inscription ending so—
His mother was a native of Ballangh, Here he spent many of his boyish days, And on the sea-coast of this parish He commenced his system of dredging.
His bust is also placed in the Court House at Peel.
He went up to London, when a young man, with the determination to become an artist, but his friends saw reasons to dissuade him from such a career, and, by so doing, the world may, perhaps, have lost a clever caricaturist, but probably not a painter, His tastes next led him to turn to geology and natural history; but at that time natural science was considered only as an appanage of, or a relaxation in the study of medicine, and, therefore, he had to go through the curriculum of the latter profession, which, however, he had little taste for. In producing his geological and zoological bias it is probable that his residence in Manx-land, and the natural features of that country, had an influence; and to these features we may further advert taking them in connection with himself. For move, perhaps, than any other man be made the natural history of his native island his study, though our late friend, Mr. Cumming, did much.
As regards his geological bias—the southern four-fifths, at the least, of the island are composed of metamorphic and Cambrian slates and other succeeding palæozoic rocks, and are more or less mountainous: the northern and lessor portion is of a very different formation—boulder clays and drifts resting on a foundation which is nowhere visible, and of problematic nature. The surface here is mostly a sandy plain, with an occasional bog or curragh marked by a curious and luxuriant vegetation; in some places, however, the sand forms many rounded hills, and, besides, many ancient mounds and other earth or stone works mark the surface. Thus, on the estate we have especially alluded to is an antiquity combining the stone circle with the earthen barrow—a mound of earth with its periphery supported by large quartz stones. The glacial deposits are found high up amongst the hills, and at a lower level, as displayed along the sea-cliffs, there are truly wonderful accumulations of gravel and fragments of rocks, without any stratified arrangement; larger boulders, too, are washed out of the clays in the valleys, or by ​other means perched on the hill sides: and such as are of white quartz have been used to mark boundary lines, or are often placed round ancient interments as already instanced. On Maughold Head, at about 300 feet of elevation, lies a large "erratic block” of greenstone, strongly marked with grooved and crossed lines, Above, and filling up the ploughed surface of the earlier accumulations, are horizontal deposits of sand, peat, and marine shells, the latter such as now live in the sea close at hand, but deposited higher than its waves can now reach. On this north-western part of the island, the coast is of a nature to disintegrate, the wind redistributing the sand into "broughs" or hills, imperfectly kept together by the growth of lyme-grass and mat-weed; at the extreme north—the Point of Ayre—the sands, probably thrown on shore by currents, are drifted by the same agency into parallel undulations or ridges, much like the waves of the sea—a truly barren waste, adorned with little but gorse, a plant, however, here not wholly despised, but chopped in windmills for fodder. North of Peel there is a narrow tract of old red sandstone forming the sea-cliffs, and of it the venerable cathedral of St. Germain is in part built; it is there strangely pitted and honeycombed, apparently by the action of the winds. The fragments of shells seen in the hardened sands in this part of the island are perhaps due to wind-drifts. It is in what we may term "Forbes's Parish" that the remains of the great deer or elk (Megaceros) principally occur, entombed below the peat of the curragh, and reposing on a bed of shell-marl] of fresh-water formation, not much more than twenty fees above the sea level. These curraghs must be partly of recent and partly of pleistocene formation—to use Forbes's term; the latter, because when the elk lived here, its range could not have been so limited as it must have been if the isle were as we see it now.
The enrraghs are of interest in other respects, especially to the botanist. The Osmunda is the common fern. Willows, such as Salix pentandra, &c., S. fusca, and its many varieties, the sweetgale, the bog-bean, the marsh cinquefoil, milfoil, and several other rarer plants, also occur in them. Pulegium vulgare is common in wet clay, and on the dry, sandy road I found Silene Anglica, Papaver Argemone. several species of rose and sweetbriar, with, however, but one Rubus (friticosus.) On a dry bank, near Jurby, was a remarkable potentilla, (P. Hirta,) scarcely indigenous, though found also near Perth. How the plant got here it is difficult to conceive.
The landscape is somewhat drear, the church towers the most conspicuous objects. Little streams, originating in the marshes, with difficulty find their way to the sea, and enter it, like the Callaue, between the sand hills, forming little coves, interesting from the numerous marine plants growing about. It was in these streams and in the curragh that Forbes fished for Limnei and Planorbes. ​By ascending one of the glens, south of Ballaugh, but still in that Sheading, (so called,) we are soon in a different kind of country—in the heart of the hilly part of the island, quite sub-alpine in character. Here the mosses are not low and flat, but commonly high and inclined, becoming constant feeders to the rivulets. They abound with the usual plants—Drosera rotundifolia, Pinguicula, Anagallis tenella, Scutellaria minor, Hypericum elodes, Waldenbergia, Aspidium Oreopteris, Lycopedia, Bryum punctaten, and, no doubt, others. Frequent waterfalls are here formed, where the streams flow down their rocky beds, and especially whores they leave the slate rock for the boulder clays, which the water more easily scoops out. Such is the case at the Spoogt-vane, a pretty cascade, situated in a retired amphitheatre, south of Ballaugh. It is less frequented than Rhenass or Glen Meay, and to some, therefore, perhaps as pleasing, though these are certainly romantic, the last even approaching the grand, where the river finally trends through the rocky ravine to the sea. There are the remains of a Treen Church in the wood, near the Spoogt-vane Cascade. The river abounds with a small dark-coloured trout.
[To Be Continued.]
* ↑ In a specimen obtained by the writer. but broken below the snags, the measurement from the centre of the forehead to the extreme end of the right horn would be, in a direct line, 4ft. 6in.
* ↑ Avenaria peploides, Pyrethrum maritimum, Cerastium tetvandrum, Eryngium, Glaucium, Beta maritima, Astiplex laciniata, Triticum toliaceum. No plants or shells are recorded, except such as the writer noticed, unless otherwise notified.
* ↑ I gathered Hypericum androsœnuem, and Hiertcimon sylvaticum below the fall; and at Glen Meay, Vicia sylvatica and Erodium maritimumm.
This work was published before January 1, 1930, and is in the public domain worldwide because the author died at least 100 years ago.
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