Heroes of science

Roderick Impey Murchison was the descendant of a very old Rossshire family, who were great supporters of the Stuarts in the wild western country of the north of Scotland. His great-grandfather fell at Sheriffmuir, and his grandfather, a tenant farmer, had to struggle with slender means during a long life. But long before this fine old man died, at the age of ninety-nine, he saw the fortunes of his family retrieved by his eldest son, whom he outlived.

This son, Roderick Impey Murchison’s father, was born in 1751, and, thanks to the cheap and good education which was to be got at Edinburgh and Glasgow, he became a surgeon. Passing the examination at the Royal College of Surgeons in England, the young man was sent out to India, and living at Lucknow for seventeen years, made a fortune. He came home to the old country, and bought the estate of Tarradale, in the eastern part of Ross, kept up the old Highland customs, and made himself useful as a medical man when aid was required. He married, in 1791, the daughter of Mackenzie, of Fairburn, lineal representative of the Rory More, or Big Roderick Mackenzie, to whom the estates had been granted by James V. Their younger son, Roderick Impey was born in February, 1792, and was reared by the “sonsie” miller’s wife of Tarradale, who hushed him to sleep with gaelic lullabies, and gave him an occasional taste of the famous whiskey distilled on the adjacent lands of Ferrintosh. But the father got delicate and moved to the south, carrying with him his household. On the way an end nearly came to the future geologist, for his father, wishing to make the boy “stand fire,” presented what was thought an empty pistol at him. The mother snatched the child away, and instantly a charge of shot rattled through the window. The father died when Murchison was only four years of age, and the boy wrote in after years his sad memory of the last of his father: “The opening of the red damask curtains of the lofty old-fashioned bed, the last kiss of my dying parent, and the form of the old-fashioned edifice to which the invalid had been removed, have been stereotyped in my mind.” The father was an accomplished gentleman, and the mother a young and attractive lady. A second marriage gave Murchison a good step-father in Colonel Robert Macgregor Murray, a friend of the deceased; but home life was broken up when the colonel was ordered off to Ireland during the rebellion. So Murchison was sent to the Durham Grammar School in 1799. He had a bitter parting from his mother and from Sally, the Devonshire lass, who gave him his English accent, which he retained through life. Six years were passed at school, and he was as full of mischief as most boys; picking up at the same time some of the so-called rudiments of learning.

He was ringleader in most of the exploits of the school, and during the holidays led a very active life with the assistance of his pony and terrier. One day his uncle told him that in due time he would make a good soldier, and from that day Murchison read of nothing but military heroes.

At the early age of thirteen he was sent to the military college at Great Marlow, and, after one pluck, was admitted as cadet. There he became conspicuous as a daring leader of fun and frolic, and as a moderate student; nevertheless he was great at drill. A gift which decided in after years much of his success was fostered at Great Marlow. His exercises in military drawing led to the future rapidity and correctness of his “eye” for “country” in geological surveying.

At fifteen years of age Murchison was gazetted as an ensign in the 36th regiment, and at Edinburgh he took lessons in French, Italian, German, and mathematics. He learned to ride and fence, and went in for debating. So having, as he said, done so much in the way of having a good opinion of himself, he was ordered to join his regiment at Cork in the winter of 1807-8. He was wonderfully surprised to find the officers anything but dandies, and, in fact, true old soldiers, quiet, well disciplined and associated with a first-rate fighting regiment. His chief, Colonel Burne, was a cool and gallant officer, and a favourite of Sir Arthur Wellesley’s. In 1808 the regiment was prepared for service in South America, and was suddenly ordered to Portugal, and on August 1st he landed, and saw the future Wellington put his foot on Portuguese soil, followed by his aide-de-camp, the future Lord Raglan.

A battle was soon to be fought, and at Vimiera.

Professor Geikie’s charming “Life of Murchison,” from which this little history is compiled, gives the following graphic description of Murchison’s first fight, at Vimiera:—

“To return to our own part of the battle, i.e., to our left wing, the fire of the enemy soon became very hot, and even though the 36th were lying on their breasts under the brow, our men were getting pretty much hit, whilst the regiment in our rear, the 82nd, which at that time could not fire a shot, suffered more than we did. General Spencer, who commanded the division, when moving about to regulate the general movements, was hit by a ball in the hand, and I saw him wrap his handkerchief round it, and heard him say, ‘It is only a scratch!’ Soon after the light infantry in our front closed files and fell in; our guns we pulled back, and then came the struggle. General Ferguson waving his hat, up we rose, old Burne (our colonel) crying out, as he shook his yellow cane, that he would knock down any man who fired a shot.

“This made some merriment among the men, as tumbling over was the fashion without the application of their colonel’s cane. “Charge,” was the word, and at once we went over the brow with a steady line of glittering steel, and with a hearty hurrah, against six regiments in close column, with six pieces of artillery, just in front of the 36th. But not an instant did the enemy stand against this most unexpected sally within pistol shot. Off they went, and all their guns were instantly taken, horses and all, and then left in our rear, whilst we went on chasing the runaways for a mile and a half, as hard as we could go, over the moor of Tourinhâo. They rallied, it is true, once or twice, particularly behind some thick prickly-pear hedges and a hut or two on the flat table-land; but although their brave General Solignac was always cantering to their front, and animating them against us, they at last fled precipitately, until they reached a small hamlet, where, however, they did make a tolerable stand.

“Here it was that Sir Arthur Wellesley overtook us after a smart gallop. He had witnessed from a distance our steady and successful charge, and our capture of the guns, and he now saw how we were thrusting the French out of this hamlet. Through the sound of the musketry, and in the midst of much confusion, I heard a shrill voice calling out, ‘Where are the colours of the 36th?’ and I turned round (my brother ensign, poor Peter Bone, having just been knocked down), and looking up into Sir Arthur’s bright and confident face said, ‘Here they are, sir.’ Then he shouted, ‘Very well done, my boys! Halt, halt—quite enough.’

“The French were now at their last run, in spite of every effort of Solignac to rally them. Several of our bloody-minded old soldiers said in levelling, ‘they would bring down the —— on the white horse,’ and sure enough the gallant fellow fell, just as the 71st Highlanders, who were on our left, being moved round en potence, charged down the hill, with their wounded piper playing, sitting on the ground, and completed the rout of the enemy, taking General Solignac of course prisoner.”

Subsequently Murchison’s regiment joined the expedition of Sir John Moore, and participated in the disastrous retreat upon Corunna. “Murchison (writes Professor Geikie) suffered much, although he was strong and in good health, from the excessive fatigue. On one occasion, after a fruitless midnight march against the enemy, who was supposed to be advancing to the attack, Murchison, commanding that night an outlying picquet, threw himself into a corner of a farmer’s yard, and soon fell asleep. Day had scarcely broken when the cry of ‘Picquet, turn out!’ roused him from his rest, but not in time to escape the notice of the vigilant Colonel Packe, who, however, allowed him to escape with a severe reprimand. But after the halt at Tugo, when having vainly offered battle to the French, the British army retreated by a forced march to Corunna, the young lieutenant fairly broke down. The mule, which had hitherto carried himself or his kit, was lost; his old soldier servant had gone back to seek among the snow for his wife and child.” Of this sad time he has preserved the following recollections:—“Never shall I forget the night which followed the abandoning of our position in front of Tugo. We marched through that city at dusk, and then blew up the bridge, which was to check for awhile our foe. In darkness, with no food, and after sleepless nights, with worn-out shoes, and thoroughly disgusted with always running off and not fighting, this army now fell into utter disorder. Starved as they were, the men soon became reckless, and all the regiments got mixed together; in short, the soldiers were desperate, in spite of the exertions of the few mounted officers. For my own part, I walked on, usually in my sleep, with the grumbling and tumultuous mass, until awakened by the loss of my boots in one of the numerous deep cuts across the roads, which were like quagmires, so that with my bare feet I had some twenty miles still to march. Many of the soldiers got away from the road to right and left. Marching all that dreadful night my young frame at last gave way, the more so as I was barefoot, cold, and starved, and already the great body of troops had got ahead of me. In short, I was now one of a huge arrear of stragglers when day broke and the little hamlet was in sight.

“Seated on a bank on the side of the road, and munching a raw turnip which I had gathered from the adjacent field, and just as I was feeling that I never could regain my regiment and must be taken a prisoner, a black-eyed drummer of the 96th came from the village, whither the young fellow had been to cater. Seeing I was exhausted, and almost as young as myself, and not yet a hardened old soldier, he slipped round his canteen, which he had contrived to fill with red wine, and gave me a hearty drink. He thus saved me from being taken prisoner by the French, who were rapidly advancing, and who, if they had had a regiment of cavalry in pursuit, might at that moment have taken prisoners, or driven into the mountains, a good third of the British forces.

“With the draught of wine I trudged on again, and came in, at eleven o’clock of the 10th, into the town of Betanzos, and rejoined my regiment, which had marched in about fifty men only, with the colours, though ere night it was made up to its strength of six hundred and odd men. This fact alone shows better than a world of other evidence, what forced night-marches with a starving and retreating army must infallibly produce. At Tugo the 36th regiment was fit to fight anything; in two days it was a rabble.

“Happily for me I tumbled into a shoemaker’s house. His handsome young wife washed my feet with warm water, and furnished me with stockings, while her husband came to my further aid with shoes. But my swollen feet had no time to recover. On the following day the whole army, such as it was, passed over the river, blowing up the bridge and taking up its last position.

“There, remnant as it was, the army formed a respectable line—Corunna within two miles of us, and our fleet ready to back us. Provisions and shoes were served out to us, and with such luxuries the bivouac, even in the month of January, was well borne. In truth, the army got into comparative good spirits, and on the 15th the French crossed the last bridge we had blown up, and were defiling at a respectable distance along our front. We were quite refreshed, and ready to repel them. The picquets, indeed, of our (Hope’s) division had a sharp encounter in that evening, and when looking through the colonel’s glass, I saw Colonel Mackenzie, of the 5th regiment, fall dead from his grey horse whilst leading an attack on two of the enemy’s guns.

“On the 16th, just after our frugal repast, and whilst leaning over one of the walls where we lay, my old colonel, after looking some time with his glass, suddenly exclaimed to me, ‘Now, my boy, they’re coming on;’ and when I took a peep to the hills beyond on the right and south-west, I perceived the glitter of columns coming out of a wood. Scarcely had the colonel given the word to fall in, when a tremendous fire opened from a battery of seventeen to twenty pieces, under cover of which the enemy was rolling down in dense columns from the wooded hills upon our poor fellows, who were in a hollow with their arms piled, like our own, until they were assaulted.

“For our cavalry was extinct, as the horses and men, as well as most of our artillery, were embarked on the 13th and 14th; yet never since Englishmen fought was there a more gallant fight than was made by the 4th, 42nd, and 50th regiments (Lord W. Bentinck’s brigade), who rushed on with the bayonet, and, supported by guards, held their own against a terrific superiority, until General Paget was ordered to move his brigade towards the enemy’s flank, and compelled them to withdraw; not, however, before poor Moore, galloping out from the town, fell while encouraging the troops, and Baird, who marched his division out of the town, had lost his arm. My own brigade had much less to do, our front line and picquets being alone engaged.

“As night fell, and after the firing had ceased, the enemy having returned to his own ground, we received the order to march into Corunna and embark. Our fires were left burning to deceive the enemy, and make him believe that he must fight us again next morning if he hoped to beat us.

“Silently and regularly we moved on this our last short night-march in the dark, tranquil night of the 16th, and, passing through the gates, reached the quay. The names of our respective transports had previously been explained to us, my own being the brig Reward, which I found to be from Sunderland. I was on deck as light dawned, and then at once saw the danger of the position of this miserable little transport, as well as of a dozen or more of the same craft. They had been foolishly allowed to anchor immediately under the tongue of high land which forms the eastern side of the harbour, and on which there were no land defences. Knowing that this ground was only a continuation of the hilly track on which my division had marched a few hours before, and being certain that the French would with the peep of day pass over our old bivouac to this promontory, I at once urged our skipper to get up his anchor betimes. But the grog had, I suppose, been strong that night. He exclaimed, ‘Why, I tell you, the brave Highlanders are there; they have not come away like you folks.’ Scarcely had he spoken when a battery of field-pieces opened their fire and sent some balls through our rigging. Turning pale as death under the fire of these mere field-pieces, and seeing that his crew were ready to run below, he applied the axe to the cable, and in a few minutes we were drifting away as we best could. The wind being from the east, we were fast approaching the rocks on which the Castle of Antonio stands, and on which at least five transports similarly circumstanced to my own were wrecked, the men being saved with difficulty, after losing their arms, colours, and baggage.

“I have often reflected on the extraordinary want of all due arrangement on the part of our admiral, in command of a splendid fleet, who allowed those miserable transports to anchor in such a position without placing a frigate or two near them to silence the puny battery and prevent the dismay which seized the skippers.

“Not missing stays, the Reward floated away, and was soon going fast before a strong nor’-easter, with the rest of the fleet helter-skelter for the Channel.”

In 1815 Murchison met Charlotte Hugouin, the daughter of General Hugouin, and as she was attractive, piquante, clever, and highly educated, she made a conquest of the gallant soldier. They were soon married, at Buriton, in Hampshire.

Hitherto he had lived at his own free will. From this time he came under the influence of a thoughtful, cultivated, and affectionate woman. Quietly and imperceptibly that influence grew, and she led him, with true womanly tact, into a sphere of exertion where his uncommon powers might find full scope. To his wife he owed his fame, as he never failed gratefully to record; but years had to pass before her guidance had accomplished what she had set before her as her aim.

Tired of the army, and possessing a great amount of energy and physical power, Murchison longed for a profession, and at one time seriously contemplated entering the Church. But money was scarce, and he went with his wife to live economically in Italy. This was an epoch in his life, and he went by way of Paris, and there he heard Cuvier lecture. At Geneva he met De Candolle, and as his wife had relatives at Vevay, they spent some time there, and Murchison began taking walking tours. On one occasion he walked four hundred and thirty-two miles over mountain ground, in fourteen days, finishing with a last day’s walk of thirty-seven miles. In another excursion to Mont Blanc he walked one hundred and twenty miles in three days. This was characteristic of the man. But it was not simple exercise that he took, for his retentive memory and eye for landscape were occupied; and such walks always produced good results in after years.

Arrived at Rome they went into lodgings, and Murchison became a confirmed visitor of galleries, museums, and churches. Then Mrs. Murchison fell ill, and they went, on her recovery, to Naples, where, of course, Vesuvius was seen, but oddly enough, his written impressions of the scene do not tell of any geological tastes. Two years glided away, and they founded his intellectual life, and impressed him that it was better than gaiety. When returned to England, Murchison sold his Scotch estate and went to live in a most out of the way old mansion at Barnard Castle, in Durham. Then there was no art, and therefore Murchison became a sportsman, and for five years rode as hard and as well to the front as any of his fox-hunting friends. Every now and then some intellectual society was enjoyed at some of the great houses of the neighbourhood, and Murchison made the acquaintance of Sir Humphrey Davy. Mrs. Murchison did not care about the everlasting hunting, and tried, in her wise manner, to wean him from the purposeless life he was leading. She knew botany, and tried to interest her husband in it, but he did not care for it; then she tried to learn mineralogy to get him to help her. But Murchison got deeper and deeper into the love of field sports, and took a house at Melton Mowbray and hunted six days in the week. Murchison got tired at last, and having met Sir Humphrey Davy again, was advised by him to interest himself about chemistry. So Murchison sold his horses and gave up his establishment, really intending to settle in London. But probably want of means prevented his having an establishment in the West End at first, so he led a less active but still sporting life in the south of Scotland for some time.

Murchison was now to change his method of life completely, and the summer of 1824 saw the last of his rambles, wherever the rocks around him made no direct and urgent appeal to him. Bringing his wife to London, they rented a house in Montague Place, and Murchison began to attend scientific lectures, and especially those on geology, which was at that time much talked about. Hutton’s admirable views of the causes of the changes on the surface of the earth, and their possible comparison with those of the present day, was making progress, but was still antagonized by the notions of sudden convulsions and great underground movements. He went to the Geological Society, a young and ardent one, which had sprung into active work in spite of the opposition of the nursing mother of science, the Royal Society.

With hearing lectures on science, scientific papers and discussions, attending evening soirées, and the opportunity of hearing and talking to men who had already made themselves famous, Murchison found enough fully to fill up his time, and to make London life a very different thing to him from what it had been in the old days, when he used to escape to town from the monotony of a country barrack. With his characteristic ardour, he had not completed his first winter’s studies in geology before he longed to be off into the field to observe for himself.

“My first real field work,” he says, “began under Professor Buckland, who having taken a fancy to me as one of his apt scholars, invited me to visit him at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, and attend one or two of his lectures. This was my true launch. Travelling down with him in the Oxford coach, I learned a world of things before we reached the Isis, and, amongst other things, I enjoyed a lecture on crustacea, given whilst he pulled to pieces on his knees, a cold crab, bought at a fishmonger’s shop at Maidenhead, where he usually lunched as the coach stopped.

“On repairing from the Star inn to Buckland’s domicile, I never can forget the scene which awaited me. Having, by direction of the janitor, climbed up a narrow staircase, I entered a long corridor-like room (now all destroyed), which was filled with rocks, shells, and bones in dire confusion, and, in a sort of sanctum at the end was my friend, in his black gown, looking like a necromancer, sitting on the sole rickety chair not covered with some fossils, and cleaning out a fossil bone from the matrix.”

The few days spent at Oxford were memorably pleasant. Buckland’s wit and enthusiasm glowed all his scientific sayings and doings, and he had a rare power of description, by which he could make even a dry enough subject fascinatingly interesting. Murchison heard one or two brilliant lectures from him, but what was of still more importance, he accompanied the merry professor and his students, mounted on Oxford hacks, to Shotover Hill, and for the first time in his life had a landscape geologically dissected before him. From that eminence his eye was taught to recognize the broader features of the succession of the oolitic rocks of England up to the far range of the Chalk Hills, and this not in a dull, text-book fashion, for Buckland, in luminous language, brought the several elements of the landscape into connection with each other, and with a few fundamental principles which have determined the sculpturing of the earth’s surface. His audience came to see merely a rich vale in the midst of fertile England, but before they quitted the ground, the landscape had been made to yield up to them, clear notions of the origin of springs and the principles of drainage. This was the very kind of instruction needed to fan the growing flame of Murchison’s zeal for science. He returned to town burning with desire to put his knowledge to some use by trying to imitate, no matter how feebly, the admirable way in which the Oxford professor had applied the lessons of the lecture-room to the elucidation of the history of hills and valleys.

Murchison started with his wife in the middle of August, on a tour of nine weeks along the south coast, from the Isle of Wight into Devon and Cornwall. Taking a light carriage and a pair of horses, he made the journey in short stages, lingering for days at some of the more interesting or important geological localities. Driving, boating, walking, or scrambling, the enthusiastic pair signalized their first geological tour by a formidable amount of bodily toil.

Mrs. Murchison specially devoted herself to the collection of fossils, and to sketching the more striking geological features of the coast-line, while her husband would push on to make some long and laborious detour. In this way, while she remained quietly working at Lyme Regis, he struck westward for a fortnight into Devon and Cornwall, to make his first acquaintance with the rocks to which, in after years, Sedgwick and he were to give the name by which they are now recognized all over the world. It was in the course of this tour that he met with a man, whom he has the merit of having brought into notice, and who certainly amply requited him by the services rendered in later years. William Lonsdale had served in the Peninsular war, and retired on half-pay to Bath. With the most simple and abstemious habits, his slender income sufficed not only for his wants, but for the purchase of any book or fossil he coveted, and so he spent his time in studying the organic remains, and especially the fossil corals, to be found in his neighbourhood. Murchison met him accidentally in some quarries, “a tall, grave man, with a huge hammer on his shoulder,” and found him so full of information, that he stayed some days at Bath under Lonsdale’s guidance.

With the enlargement of view which so instructive a ramble had given him, Murchison prepared and read to the Geological Society, on 16th December, 1825, his first scientific paper—“A Geological Sketch of the North-western Extremity of Sussex, and the adjoining parts of Hants and Surrey.” This little essay bore manifest evidence of being the result of careful observation of the order of succession of the rocks in the field, followed by as ample examination of their fossils as he could secure, from those best qualified to give an opinion upon them. In these respects it was typical of all his later work. Having shown by this first publication his capacity as observer and describer, and being further recommended by the leisure which his position of independence enabled him to command, he was soon after elected one of the two honorary secretaries of the Geological Society. “Lyell being then a law-student, with chambers in the Temple, could only devote a portion of his time to our science, and was glad to make way as secretary to one who, like myself, had nothing else to do than think and dream of geology, and work hard to get on in my new vocation.”

In the spring of 1826 he was elected into the Royal Society—an honour more easily won then than now, and for which, as the President, his old friend Sir Humphry Davy told him, he was indebted, not to the amount or value of his scientific work, but to the fact that he was an independent gentleman, having a taste for science, with plenty of time, and enough of money to gratify it.

Murchison next investigated, at the instance of Dr. Buckland, the geological age of the Brora coalfield, in Sutherlandshire. Some geologists maintained that the rocks of that district were merely a part of the ordinary coal, or carboniferous system; others held them to be greatly younger, to be, indeed, of the same general age with the lower oolitic strata of Yorkshire. A good observer might readily settle this question; Murchison resolved to try.

Again he prepared himself by reading and study of fossils to understand the evidence he was to collect and interpret, and in order to do full justice to the Scottish tract, he went first to the Yorkshire coast, and made himself master of the succession, and leading characters of the rocks so admirably displayed along that picturesque line of cliffs. The summer had hardly begun before he and his wife broke up their camp in London and were on the move northwards. At York he made the acquaintance of two men, with whom he was destined in after life to have much close intercourse and co-operation—the Rev. William Vernon (afterwards Vernon Harcourt) and Mr. (subsequently Professor) John Phillips.

Murchison’s own record of the meeting is as follows:—“Phillips, then a youth, was engaged in arranging a small museum at York. He recommended Murchison strongly to his uncle, William Smith, who was then living at Scarborough, and had little intercourse with the Geological Society. From the moment I had my first walk with William Smith (then about sixty years old), I felt that he was just the man after my own heart; and he, on his part, seeing that I had, as he said, ‘an eye for a country,’ took to me, and gave me most valuable lessons. Thus he made me thoroughly acquainted with all the strata north and south of Scarborough. He afterwards accompanied me in a boat all along the coast, stopping and sleeping at Robin Hood’s Bay. Not only did I then learn the exact position of the beds of poor coal which crop out in that tract of the eastern moorlands, but collecting with him the characteristic fossils from the calcareous grit down to the lias, I saw how clearly strata must alone be identified by their fossils, inasmuch as here, instead of oolite limestone like those of the south we had sandstones, grits, and shales which, though closely resembling the beds of the old coal, were precise equivalents of the oolitic series of the south. Smith walked about stoutly with me all under the cliffs from Robin Hood’s Bay to Whitby, making me well note the characteristic fossils of each formation.”

Though the main object of this summer tour was to work out the geological problem which had been assigned to him in Sutherlandshire, he sketched a most circuitous route, partly for the sake of showing Mrs. Murchison something more of the Highlands than she had yet seen, and partly with the view of putting to use his new acquirements in geology; so that after reaching Edinburgh, and having its geology expounded to him by Jameson, instead of striking north at once, he turned westwards to the island of Arran, and spent many weeks among the western islands from the Firth of Clyde to the north of Skye. The hills of his native country had now acquired an interest for him which they never possessed even in the days when they drew him off in eager pursuit of grouse and black cock. At every halt his first anxiety was to know what the rocks of the place might be, and how far he could identify their geological position. In Arran he filled his notebook with observations and queries about granite, red sandstone, limestone, and other puzzling matters, on which his previous experience in fieldwork in the south of England and in Yorkshire could throw no light, and for the elucidation of which he wisely resolved to secure, at some future time, the guidance and co-operation of an older geologist than himself. It was in the fulfilment of this resolution that Sedgwick and he first became fellow-workers in the field.

In the wildest of the western islands he and his wife did excellent work in collecting fossils, and thereby obtaining materials for making more detailed comparison between the secondary rocks of the west of Scotland and those of England than had been attempted by Dr. Macculloch. The actual fossil-hunting was mainly done by Mrs. Murchison, after whom one of the shells (Ammonites Murchisoniæ) was named by Sowerby, while her husband climbed the cliffs and trudged over the moors and crags, to make out the order of succession among the secondary strata. But the tour was not merely geological; many a halt and detour were made to get a good view of some fine scenery, or to make yet another sketch. Friends and highland cousins, too, were plentifully scattered along the route, so that the travellers had ample experience of the hearty hospitality of those regions. An occasional shot at grouse or deer, varied the monotony of the hammering; but even when stalking, Murchison could not keep his eyes from the rocks. Amid the jottings of his sport he had facts to chronicle about the gneiss or porphyry or sandstone through which the sport had led him. This characteristic, traceable even at this early period of his life, remained prominent up to the last autumn of his life in which he was able to wield a gun or hammer.

The summer had in great part passed before he reached that part of the eastern coast of Sutherlandshire where the scene of his special task lay; but that task proved to be eminently easy. From Dunrobin, where he was hospitably entertained, he could follow northwards and southwards a regular succession of strata, and he recognized in them the equivalents of parts of the oolite series of Yorkshire. The Brora coal, therefore, instead of forming part of the true carboniferous system, was simply a local peculiarity in the oolitic series. He made a collection of the fossils, which offered a means of satisfactory comparison with the oolitic rocks of England.

The rapidity with which this piece of work could be done left time for a prolongation of the tour northwards through Caithness, even up into the Orkney Islands, but at length the tourists had to prepare for a southward migration again. Reaching Inverness, they turned eastward to Aberdeen, and thence down the eastern coast by Peterhead, by Buller’s of Buchan, Arbroath, and St. Andrews. The immediate result of this summer’s work was seen in the preparation of a paper for the Geological Society.

Professor Sedgwick had already distinguished himself in the difficult labour of unravelling the structure of some of the older rocks, and Murchison suggested that they should visit Scotland and examine and describe part of the country together. They desired to ascertain if possible the position and general relations of the Old Red sandstone. This journey, intensely amusing in its anecdotes, led to much united work and good fellowship.

Having learned the principles of the science, Murchison went to study geology in the field on the continent. Accompanied by Mrs. Murchison, he visited the extinct volcanoes of Auvergne, the South of France and Italy, and finally Germany. Next year the Alps were explored, and subsequently Austria. At Vienna, Murchison indulged a little in what he always liked, and which did good to science, good society, and then started for Styria, and got much puzzled about the rocks and fossils at Gosau. On his return to England Murchison became secretary to the Geological Society, and held the position for five years, and then he became the president of the society. Subsequently he began seriously to attempt the description of the geology of Wales which ended in the establishment of the Silurian system of rocks. Then the Devonian and old red sandstones were considered, and the merits of the paleontologist, Lonsdale, who really established the great geological division of the Devonian, were fully conceded. About this time Murchison and his wife settled in the well known mansion in Belgrave Square, which was such a home for scientific men, British and foreign, for many a long year to come.

Russia was the next country to be explored, and Murchison spent a long and very pleasant time there; and his description of the Ural Mountains was of great importance. He was the first to sketch out broadly the geological construction of that very monotonous country, and to point out the existence there of a formation which covers the coal-bearing rocks of England, and which he called the Permian. Returning to England, after receiving the thanks of the Emperor Nicholas, Murchison again became President of the Geological Society, and with increased experience endeavoured to work out more fully than before, the old rocks of Wales, which he and Sedgwick had laboured over in common. Murchison and Sedgwick, however, began at this time to misunderstand one another, and those admirable men, the one having recognized the higher strata, and the other the lower, began to differ regarding the line of separation of their work. It is an unsettled point even at the present day, notwithstanding all the knowledge that these great men have left to us, and all that has come to science since their time. Ever enthusiastic in the cause of science as he had been in war and in the field, Murchison allowed himself no rest, but started for Germany via France to examine the red sands and clays in those countries which, overlying the carboniferous formation, resemble in position the Permian of Russia. The geologist was treated like a prince by kings, emperors, and a host of titled people who were glad to welcome the perfect gentleman so full of good genial temper and amiability.

At the same time Murchison did not forget the British Association for the Advancement of Science, with which he was officially connected. In 1843 he began to interest himself in the then little Geographical Society, which had been founded in 1830, chiefly by members of the Rayleigh Travellers’ club. Murchison was chosen its president, and he read an address to the fellows in 1844. This society, now of great utility to science and civilization, was fostered mainly by Murchison, and passed through years of steady progress under his management. In the same year, our geologist visited Scandinavia, where he found science more honoured than anywhere else on earth, and went on to St. Petersburg. Returning to England, Murchison and his fellow labourers, Von Keyserling and De Verneuil, published the great work on “Russia, and the Ural Mountains,” and our hero became a recognized pillar in geological science.

Knowing the geology of the Ural Mountains thoroughly, and having paid much attention to those parts of them where gold is found, Murchison was impressed, when he read of the nature of the Australian Alps, that they ought to be auriferous. In 1845, and 1846, Murchison spoke and wrote on this subject, and kept on directing the attention of the colonists to the necessity of searching for the precious mineral. In 1846 Murchison advised the unemployed tin miners of Cornwall to emigrate and dig for gold in Australia. In 1847 a Mr. W. T. Smith, of Sydney, acquainted Murchison that he had discovered gold, and a Mr. Phillips, of Adelaide, wrote announcing the same fact. Finally, in 1848, Murchison impressed on Her Majesty’s Secretary of State for the colonies the necessity of having Australia surveyed, for the purpose of gold finding. Three years afterwards a Mr. Hargraves came forward as the real Simon pure, and was acknowledged by the ignorant legislature of New South Wales as the discoverer of gold in Australia. Count Strzelecki, a geologist, sent Murchison specimens of rocks from Australia, and positively found gold, not by inference, as in Murchison’s case, but in reality. But at the request of the colonial authorities it was kept a secret!!! The Rev. W. B. Clarke, F.R.S., a capital geologist, found gold in places, and settled what rocks it was in. This was in 1841. So that Murchison, although not the first discoverer, or the first who inferred the existence of gold in the Australian rocks, must have great credit given to him.

Twenty years had passed away since Murchison sold his horses and gave up fox hunting, and he had done more than any man to establish the grand features of the outside structure of the earth, and to prove the succession everywhere of the same great formations. He was knighted in 1846, an honour which was appreciated in those days, but which is not compatible with the proper simplicity and nobility of science at the present time. Everybody was glad of the honour being given, and received by Murchison, and “Sir Roderick,” for the future came as aptly to the thoughts of his friends as “Mr. Murchison” had done of old. There is no doubt that at this time this experienced geologist believed that great lapses of time had occurred, involving great distinctions and new creations between the successive geological formations, that great changes had happened, universally, in the physical geography of the land and sea before a new formation was produced, and that the vast majority of fossils found in one were not recognized in a succeeding formation. He believed much in grand and sudden catastrophic changes in nature. The presidency of the British Association was given to the new scientific knight, and he worthily occupied the chair at the meeting at Southampton in 1846.

In 1848, the year of revolution in Europe, Murchison enjoyed foreign politics and Alpine geology, and made the acquaintance of most of the young Swiss geologists, whose names are now so celebrated. An essay on the geology of the Alps was written, and our hero received the Copley Medal of the Royal Society. But the many years of close and hard work had told even on Murchison’s iron frame; and his wife was an invalid. So they spent the summer of 1849 at Buxton, much to the disgust of the geologist, however. He attended the meeting of the British Association at Birmingham, however, and relapsed into a state of perpetual “liver,” suppressed gout and “stomach attacks.” After awhile the invalid went abroad and enjoyed rambling over the extinct volcanoes of Auvergne, and had his trip over the same ground twenty-two years before, brought before his mind. But he did not accept the theories of Lyell about the formation of the valleys and the denudation of the district. He stuck, unfortunately, to the violent in nature, and dismissed the truth of the former uniform and slow action of the same forces as now prevail, from his mind. In the next year Murchison was happy again with his old friend Sedgwick, and they geologized in the highlands, and enjoyed the hospitality of the young Duke and Duchess of Argyll. Then the southern uplands of Scotland were examined; and Murchison, stimulated by the great progress of the writings of Lyell, came out in strong opposition to the Huttonian philosophy. Murchison contended in favour of great oscillations and ruptures of the earth’s crust leading to the sudden breaking up and submergence of tracts of land; but he did not explain how all this took place or could take place. He believed in many superficial deposits, such as drift, being the product of violent convulsions and floods. His frame of mind was not difficult to account for. He had found, in investigating the Alps, that movements amongst the strata had occurred on a vast scale, and that whole series of them, hundreds of feet thick, had not only been bent, but positively turned upside down. In 1851 Murchison visited Ireland, and geologized there, and gradually began to complete his great work, entitled “Siluria; or a Description of the Geology of the Silurian Rocks of the World and of their Fossils.” This was published in 1854. The next great act of Murchison’s was the assisting and promoting the success of the geological survey of the United Kingdom, and the establishment of the museum in Jermyn Street. This led to the establishment of the Royal School of Mines. Murchison became the director of the survey, and went into the subject with heart and soul, and found himself surrounded by the most distinguished teachers in England.

Murchison worked personally at the Scottish rocks from 1855 to 1858, and it is a matter of interest that at the present day his admirable work relating to the order of the older rocks is a vexed question. In 1860, Murchison went to the highlands for the fourth time, and came to the same conclusions as before.

Year after year the grand old man laboured on for the benefit of the sciences of geology and geography, and kept the geological survey in capital order. He obtained the sanction of the Government for colonial surveys, and was, in fact, the main stay of science in relation to the state. For ten years he did all this, and occasionally indulged in a trip to the north and west, and also into Bohemia. In 1862, Murchison was terribly troubled by the sudden ill-health of his wife, to whom he owed so much. She became more and more of an invalid, and died in 1869. It was the greatest blow possible, and it brought the kindest letter from his old friend Sedgwick, eighty-four years of age. In September, 1870, Murchison’s time was coming to an end. A slight attack of paralysis warned him to retire from active life. In the spring of 1871 he prepared his last address as president of the Royal Geographical Society, and resigned the chair he had so ably filled for fifteen years. He lingered on, and passed quietly away on October 22nd, 1871, full of years and well merited honours. Murchison’s name will live for ever as a clear, keen-eyed, careful observer of nature, and as a master of the facts relating to much of the ancient history of the earth. He was a great stimulator of men of science, assisted the weak, and helped the good worker. He had a great personal character, religious, honest, truthful, open and generous; he was a gentleman indeed. His biographer, Professor A. Geikie, F.R.S., whose most charming book has been so freely quoted by me, writes about his good old friend as follows: “A man’s face and figure afford usually a good indication of the general calibre of the spirit which lodges beneath them. The picture which rises to the mind when one thinks of Murchison, is that of a tall, wiry, muscular frame, which still kept its erectness even under the burden of almost fourscore years. It seemed the type of body for an active geologist, who had to win his reputation by dint of hard climbing and walking, almost as much as by mental power. It was, moreover, united in his case with a certain pomp and dignity of manner, which at one time recalled the military training of the Peninsula days, at another the formal courtesy of the well-bred gentleman of a bygone generation.”