A plaque to mark the 100th anniversary of the birth of Edward Forbes a marine biologist, geologist, natural historian and biogeographer who was a prolific author of scientific papers during his short life and was born in the house which once stood on this site.
The plaque is displayed outside the civic buildings in Ridgeway Steet in Douglas.
The inscription on the plaque reads as follows:
"ON THE 100TH ANNIVERSARY
OF THE BIRTH OF
EDWARD FORBES, F.R.S.
THIS STONE WAS PLACE HERE
BY THE MANX PEOPLE
TO MARK THE SITE OF THE HOUSE
IN WHICH HE WAS BORN
ON THE 12. FEB. 1815"Professor Edward Forbes FRS, FGS (12 February 1815 – 18 November 1854) Forbes was a Manx naturalist who in 1846 proposed that the distributions of montane plants and animals in certain mountain areas had been compressed downslope, and to some islands connected to the mainland, during the during the last ice age. This mechanism, which was the first natural explanation to account for the distributions of the same species on now-isolated islands and mountain tops. It was discovered independently by Charles Darwin, who credited Forbes with the idea.
He also incorrectly deduced the so-called azoic hypothesis, that life under the sea would decline to the point that no life forms could exist below a certain depth.
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Selected bibliography: “On the Comparative Elevation of Testacea in the Alps” (Magazine of Zoology and Botany, 1, 257 – 259) – 1837; listed the species that appeared in four vegetation zones and was an early stage in the development of the concept of biotic communities.
A series of five papers on molluscs and their distribution were published in 1839.
A monograph on British starfish was published serially between 1839 and 1841; in the introduction he divided the British seas into eleven provinces and indicated in a table the distribution of each species within these provinces. Another table indicated the number of species in six families of starfish which are found in four depths.
“On the Molluscs and Radiata of the Aegean Seas, and on their Distribution, Considered as Bearing on Geology” a report for the British Association in 1843; the generalisation in this report were important for biogeography and palaeontology and carried him closer to the concept of biotic communities. It was by extrapolating from this data that Forbes postulated an ‘azoic zone’ below 300 fathoms.
“On Light Thrown on Geology by Submarine Researches” a speech given to the Royal Institution of Great Britain on Friday 23rd February 1844 published in the Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal, 36[1844], 318-327; Forbes restated his earlier generalisation more explicitly.
Co-author with Lieutenant Thomas A. B. Spratt RN, of the two-volume work “Travels in Lycia” published in 1846.
“On the Connexion Between the Distribution of the Existing Fauna and Flora of the British Isles the Geological Changes Which Have Affected Their Area” (Memoirs of the Geological Survey of England and Wales, 1, 336–432) published in 1846. This paper Forbes hypothesised on the former land connections between Britain and Continental Europe and also that glaciation could account for the discontinuity of species.
Co-author with Sylvanus Hanley “The History of British Mollusca” a four-volume monograph was published between 1848 and 1852.
Presidential address to the Geological Society in February1853 was published in Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society of London in 1854 and sets out “principle of polarity” which Forbes believed explained God’s plan for creating species.
Two of Forbes most important works were published posthumously:
First – “On the Tertiary Fluvio- Marine Formation of the Isle of Wight” which was completed by his former colleagues Henry Willaim Bristow and Robert Godwin-Austen published in 1856; and
Second – “The Natural History of European Seas which was completed by Robert Godwin-Austen and published in 1859.
‘Almost all of his publications are listed in the short-title bibliography provided by George Wilson and Archibald Geikie, Memoir of Edward Forbes F.R.S., Late Regius Professor of Natural History in the University of Edinburgh (Cambridge-London-Edinburgh, 1861), pp. 575–583, the only extensive study on Forbes.’
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On a lighter note Edward Forbes also wrote the poem "The Dredging Song".
"The Dredging Song
by Edward Forbes
Blest be the spot,
My heart leaps to it o'er the swelling billow!
Home! Earth hath not
One dream that brings thee not unto my pillow.
I pine to cleave
The deep dark waters that from thee do sever.
I would not leave
Thee, mine own Isle! my heart's sweet home! oh, never,
For brighter skies,
Or the fantastic dreams of wild ambition,
No thought can rise
To win me from thy simple calm condition;
No wildfire light
Can dazzle me, thine own rude Island daughter,
'Tis utter blight
And grief doth haunt me o'er thy girdling water.
Too idolised —
Thou to whose earth this passionate heart is clinging,
Thou art too prized!
How know I what futurity is bringing? —
Estranged years,
And weary days of cold and bitter feeling,
And hopeless tears!
Oh! what a sad and shadowy train is stealing
Across my path!
Aye! mournful thoughts of which is no repressing.
Yet home — home hath,
In shade or sunshine, evermore my blessing.
Isle of my soul!
This heart leaps madly o'er the severing water;
Can space control?
Time cannot chill thine own adoring daughter.
No! till that hand
Which comes to all falls darkly, darkly, o'er her
With death's dread power.
Then make her grave — where long have slept before her
Her Island dead —
Upon the green hill that looks o'er the billow,
And let Heaven shed
Its light and incense o'er her lone Manks pillow.
Isle of my heart,
Mona! the lone! the wild! the unforgot!
My home! thou art
The star, the idol of a wayward lot —
Earth cannot bring
One dearer vision to me than thy face,
Time cannot bring
Forgetfulness! affection mocks at space.
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 through the wave above,
'Mid scenes exciting wonder,
But braver sights the dredge delights
As it roveth the waters under.
CHORUS .
Then a-dredging we will go, wise boys!
Then a-dredging we will go!
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.
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."
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