/i E R K e I E Y 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF 
 V CALIFORNIA 
 
LIFE 
 
 OF 
 
 SIR RODERICK I. MURCHISON. 
 
 VOL. I. 
 
y by fic/cersg til, R A. fry ramtfy Joseph- J3, 
 
LIFE 
 
 OF 
 
 SIR RODERICK I. MURCHISON 
 
 BART. ; K.C.B., F.B.S. ; SOMETIME DIRECTOR-GENERAL OF THE GEOLOGICAL 
 SURVEY OF THE UNITED KINGDOM. 
 
 BASED ON HIS JOURNALS AND LETTERS 
 
 WITH NOTICES OF HIS SCIENTIFIC CONTEMPORARIES 
 AND A SKETCH OF THE RISE AND GROWTH OF 
 PALEOZOIC GEOLOGY IN BRITAIN 
 
 BY AECHIBALD GEIKIE, LL.D., F.KS. 
 
 DIRECTOR OF H.M. GEOLOGICAL SURVEY OF SCOTLAND, AND MURCHISON PROFESSOR OF GEOLOGY 
 AND MINERALOGY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH. 
 
 IN TWO VOLUMES VOL. I. 
 
 Ellustratetr foitfj portraits anS SSEoolicuts 
 
 LONDON 
 
 JOHN MUREAY; ALBEMAELE STREET 
 
 1875. 
 
 Right of translation reserved. 
 
EAR7T 
 
 CClENCi 
 
 UBRAF 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 COMPARED with, foregoing periods of history, the 
 nineteenth century has been marked by the extent 
 and rapidity of its social transitions. These must 
 undoubtedly be ascribed in great measure to the 
 strides made by the physical sciences. Without 
 claiming for Geology any prominent share in them, 
 we may yet contend that this branch of science has 
 done much to open out those wider views of nature 
 and of man's place here, which have so powerfully 
 influenced the tone and tendency of human thought 
 and speculation at the present time. So that the 
 history of a man who was a conspicuous actor in the 
 drama of the establishment of Geology, as a science, 
 may possess more than a merely individual interest. 
 
 The life of Sir Roderick Murchison was cast in 
 this time of notable transition. Living on terms 
 of intimacy with not a few of the leading men of his 
 day, he himself bore a part in the leavening of the 
 community with an appreciation of the nature and 
 
 294 
 
vi PREFACE. 
 
 value of science. For many years he was in the 
 habit of keeping a record of the events which he 
 witnessed, or in which he took part. In the belief 
 that the story of his life might have some interest 
 and usefulness for those who should succeed him, 
 he used now and then during his later years to de- 
 vote his spare hours to the task of reading over his 
 early journals, and superintending their transcrip- 
 tion in whole or in abstract under his own eye. 
 In the course of time a goodly series of closely- 
 written volumes grew under the hand of the amanu- 
 ensis, but their author at length perceived that their 
 details could hardly possess sufficient interest for 
 general readers. In the spring of 1871 he pro- 
 posed to me that I should undertake the task of 
 reducing his memoranda into a connected narrative. 
 
 Having accepted the office of biographer, I found 
 that, in addition to the journals, there existed a vast 
 mass of miscellaneous letters and papers going back 
 even into last century. It appeared that Sir 
 Roderick for many years of his life never destroyed 
 any piece of writing addressed to him, notes of 
 invitation to dinner, and acceptances of invitations 
 given by himself, being abundant among the papers. 
 
 To these materials, through the kindness of his 
 friends and correspondents, to all of whom sincere 
 
PREFACE. vii 
 
 thanks are due, I was subsequently enabled to add 
 a large series of his own letters. 
 
 From the first it appeared likely that no narrative 
 devoted merely to the personal events of Sir 
 Roderick Murchison's life would be satisfactory. 
 And as the work of arranging the voluminous mate- 
 rials proceeded, the desirability of adopting a wider 
 treatment became increasingly evident. His life, 
 closely bound up with the early progress of geology 
 in this country, was one of work and movement. 
 Duly to follow its stages, the surroundings among 
 which it was passed must be constantly kept in 
 view, notably his comrades, their work, and its 
 relation to his own. Accordingly I deemed it best, 
 while keeping his story prominently before the 
 reader, to give an outline of so much at least of 
 these surroundings as would probably show with 
 adequate distinctness what Murchison was, and 
 what he did. With this view I have sketched some 
 of the more salient features in the rise and growth 
 of the geology of the older formations in Britain, 
 including, at the same time, notices of Murchison's 
 predecessors and contemporaries in the same branch 
 of science. Obviously, however, even such a general 
 outline as was alone admissible into a work like 
 the present could not be continued into the later 
 
viii PREFACE. 
 
 years when Murchison ceased to be the same pro- 
 minent worker he had previously been, and when 
 his labours were taken up and extended by others. 
 To this historical aspect of the book, I believed 
 that some additional interest might be given 
 by a selection of portraits of some of the more 
 conspicuous men to whom the establishment and 
 spread of geology in Britain is due, more especially 
 with reference to the study of the older rocks. 
 Some difficulty was necessarily encountered in 
 making the selection, arising in some cases from 
 the want of available materials for the engraver, 
 in others from the limited number of portraits 
 admissible compared with that of the geologists 
 deserving such recognition. Greenough, Fitton, and 
 Lonsdale, for example, among the earlier luminaries, 
 might have been most appropriately included in 
 the list here given. To the friends who have 
 supplied the paintings, drawings, and photographs 
 from which this little gallery of scientific worthies 
 has been engraved, my best acknowledgments are 
 gladly given. 
 
 Of Murchison's early contemporaries who outlived 
 him, and from whom assistance was received in 
 the preparation of his biography, two of the 
 most illustrious have since been removed by death. 
 
PREFACE. ix 
 
 Sir Charles Lyell furnished a series of letters on 
 geological topics written to him by Murchison. 
 Professor Phillips, besides supplying a large and 
 most interesting collection of letters, which proved 
 of great service in the preparation of the biography, 
 kindly sent some memoranda of his own, which will 
 be found incorporated in the book. To Mr. Poulett 
 Scrope I am indebted for some interesting and useful 
 notes respecting some of the older geologists of this 
 country. 
 
 My friend and colleague, Professor A. C. Ramsay, 
 has laid me under much obligation by the notes 
 and suggestions sent by him as he read over the 
 proof-sheets, and which are incorporated into the 
 text or embodied here and there in footnotes. To 
 Mr. John Murray, Mr. K. R. Murchison, Mr. Tren- 
 ham Reeks, and Professor T. Rupert Jones, F.R.S., 
 my thanks are likewise owing for a similar revision. 
 
 For the loan of letters written by Sir Roderick 
 Murchison, acknowledgment is further due to Mr. 
 Aveline, His Excellency Sir Henry Barkly, M. 
 Barrande, Dr. Corbet, Lady Denison, Sir Charles 
 Dilke, Sir Philip De Grey Malpas Egerton, Bart. ; 
 Professor George Forbes, who supplied letters 
 written to his father, Principal Forbes ; Professor 
 Johnstrup of Copenhagen, who sent a series of letters 
 
x PREFACE. 
 
 addressed to the late Professor Forchhammer ; Cap- 
 tain Grant, Professor Harkness, Professor Hughes, 
 who furnished the letters written to Sedgwick; 
 Professor Huh 1 , Major-General Sir Henry James, 
 Mr. Martin, Mr. Hugh Miller, who procured a 
 series of letters written to his father ; Mr. K. R. 
 Murchison, Mr. Murray, Mr. Lyon Playfair, C.B., 
 M.P. ; Professor Ramsay, Rev. Mr. Symonds, Mr. 
 Todhunter, from whom came the letters addressed 
 to Dr. Whewell. 
 
CONTENTS OF VOL. I. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 ANCESTRY SCHOOL-DAYS, 1 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 FIRST YEARS OF A SOLDIER'S LIFE, . . . .16 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 SIX MONTHS OF THE PENINSULAR WAR, . . . .23 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 MILITARY LIFE AT HOME, 55 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 ITALY AND ART, 73 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 FIVE YEARS OF FOX-HUNTING, 88 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 RISE OF GEOLOGY IN BRITAIN, . .96 
 
xii CONTENTS OF VOL. I. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 FIRST YEARS OF SCIENTIFIC LIFE AT HOME, . . .117 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 FIRST GEOLOGICAL RAIDS INTO THE CONTINENT, . .146 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 THE INVASION OF GRAUWACKE, 172 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY, AND SOCIAL LIFE IN LONDON, 193 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 THE SILURIAN SYSTEM, 216 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 THE DEVONIAN SYSTEM, 244 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 A GEOLOGICAL TOUR IN NORTHERN RUSSIA, . . .289 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 CENTRAL AND SOUTHERN RUSSIA, AND THE URAL MOUN- 
 TAINS, 315 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 THE CHAIR OF THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY, . . .358 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTEATIONS IN VOL. I. 
 
 PORTRAIT OF SIR RODERICK MURCHISON, from a Por- 
 trait by Pickersgill, Frontispiece. 
 
 TARRADALE, ROSS-SHIRE, Sir Roderick Murchison's Birth- 
 place, tofacepage 10 
 
 JAMES BUTTON, M.D., from a Portrait by Sir Henry Rae- 
 
 bum, in the possession of Sir George Warrender, Bart., 98 
 
 PROFESSOR ROBERT JAMESON, from a Miniature in the 
 
 possession of Dr. Claud Muirhead, Edinburgh, . . 108 
 
 REV. WILLIAM D. CONYBEARE, from a Photograph in the 
 
 possession of the Family, 115 
 
 WILLIAM HYDE WOLL ASTON, M.D., from a Drawing by 
 
 Sir Thomas Lawrence, 129 
 
 REV. PROFESSOR ADAM SEDGWICK, from a Photograph, 138 
 
 WILLIAM SMITH, LL.D., from the engraving of the Portrait 
 
 by Foureau, 190 
 
 JOHN MACCULLOCH, M.D., from a Portrait by R. B. 
 
 Faulkner, 202 
 
 PROFESSOR JOHN PLAYFAIR, from a Picture by Sir Henry 
 
 Raeburn, 225 
 
 REV. PROFESSOR WILLIAM BUCKLAND, from a Sketch 
 
 by Thomas Sopwith, Esq., 309 
 
CHAPTEE I. 
 
 ANCESTRY SCHOOL-DAYS. 
 
 A MONG the Western Highlands of Scotland there is no 
 *-" wilder tract than that which stretches between the 
 Kyles of Skye and the line of the Great Glen. From the 
 margin of the western sea the ground rises steeply into rugged 
 mountains, which slope away eastward through many miles 
 of rough moorland into the very heart of the country. The 
 bold Atlantic front of these mountains is trenched by deep 
 and narrow valleys, of which the upper parts rise above the 
 sea-level into dark and rocky glens, the lower portions sink- 
 ing under the water and forming the characteristic sea-lochs 
 or fjords of that region. In the shelter of these hollows, 
 alike in the glens, and as an irregular selvage along the 
 margins of the lochs, lie strips of arable land with farm- 
 houses and the cots of the peasantry; but all above and 
 around are the wild rough hills, shrouded for great part of 
 the year in mist, and catching the first dash of the fierce 
 western rains, which seam their sides with foaming torrents. 
 Even now, with all the appliances of modern travel, these 
 tracts of Lochalsh and Kiutail are little known, except in so 
 VOL i. A 
 
2 SIR RODERICK MURCHISON. 
 
 far as they can be seen from the sea, or from the few good 
 roads which have been made through them. But some five or 
 six generations back they were to all intents as remote from 
 the civilisation even of the Scottish Lowlands as if they had 
 lain in the heart of Eussia. No roads led across them then. 
 They could be traversed only by bridle-tracks, too little 
 trodden to be always easily traced among the bogs and 
 crags over which they lay. Notwithstanding the noble 
 inlets which bring the tides of the Atlantic far into these 
 wilds, there was then but little navigation, even of the 
 simplest kind. Save the boats used in ferrying the lochs 
 and in fishing, almost the only vessels ever seen were the 
 smacks and cutters which from time to time smuggled ashore 
 brandy and claret for the lairds. 
 
 Over this wild region the chiefs of the clan Mackenzie 
 had for a long while held sway a fierce and warlike race, 
 exemplifying on their territory the curiously mingled merits 
 and defects of the old Highland patriarchal system. In 
 their midst, however, lay one or two smaller septs, some- 
 times in league with the dominant clan, sometimes in open 
 arms on the side of their surrounding enemies. One of these 
 septs went by the name of Mhurachaidh or Macmhurachaidh, 
 that is, Murdoch or Murdochson, or, as it is now corrupted, 
 Murchison. The first of the family must have been a 
 Murdoch. Who he was, however, where he came from, and 
 what he did to distinguish himself from the other abounding 
 Murdochs of that part of Scotland, are questions to which 
 no satisfactory answer seems now possible. . Perhaps he was 
 one of the Mackenzies, or more probably of the Mathiesons, 
 or clan Malghamna, who possessed these tracts before the 
 Mackenzies, and among whom Murdoch was a frequent 
 
ANCESTRY. 3 
 
 name. 1 He may have been noted above his fellows for some 
 characteristic, so that his posterity came to be called after 
 him. 
 
 In the early part of the sixteenth century we find the 
 Murchisons in possession of land in Kintail. In the year 
 1541, Evin M'Kynnane Murchison was proprietor of Bun- 
 chrew when he obtained a remission from James v. for 
 having taken an active part, together with some of his neigh- 
 bours, in burning the castle of Eilandonan, the stronghold 
 of the Mackenzies, at the mouth of Loch Duich. It has 
 been conjectured by a friendly genealogist, that for such 
 deeds the sept received the soubriquet of " Chalmaon," or 
 " brave ;" and that this title led to their being confounded 
 with certain M'Colmans of Argyleshire. 2 There must at least 
 have been a wonderful versatility about the race, for not 
 many years after the raid on the Mackenzies, when the 
 Reformation had already made way through the country, 
 the churches of Kintail, Lochcarron, and Lochalsh were in 
 peaceable possession of different members of the family. 3 
 
 In the following century (16"34) the Murchisons appear on 
 the Eoss-shire rent-roll as holding land in Lochalsh, of which 
 they had obtained charters from the Crown. By this time, 
 
 1 This suggestion has been made to me by Mr. W. F. Skene, who 
 adds that " the small septs are often the remnants of the older popula- 
 tion." 
 
 2 In the North-West Highlands the Murchisons are called in Gaelic 
 M'Colman, and have been traced by some genealogists to an origin in 
 Argyleshire, where a sept of that name occurs. The family traditions, 
 however, insist on a more northern origin, as stated in the text. 
 
 3 In 1574, James vi. presented John Murchesoun " to the haill com- 
 moun kirk, baith parsonage and vicarage, of Kintail." In 1582 the same 
 King presented Donald Murcheson to the same church, then vacant by 
 the demission of John Murcheson, and Master Murdo Murcheson to the 
 parsonage of Lochalsh and Lochcarron. Register of Great Seal. For these 
 references I am indebted to the courtesy of Mr. Skene. 
 
4 SIR RODERICK MURCHISON. 
 
 too, they seem to have settled their differences with the 
 Mackenzies of Seaforth, for they then held rank as hereditary 
 castellans of that same Eilandonan stronghold which about 
 a hundred years earlier they had assisted to demolish. 
 
 It is not, however, until the troublous times of 1715 that 
 any member of the Murchison sept comes notably forward 
 in Highland history. Up till that period the people of these 
 wilds remained under the same clan-system which had 
 prevailed from the earliest times. The word of their chiefs 
 was their law, and they had but a feeble notion of any 
 higher rule or greater authority outside the dominions of the 
 clan. While this ancient obedience and attachment con- 
 tinued on the part of the vassals, the chiefs themselves were 
 more or less influenced by somewhat similar feelings towards 
 the old line of the Stuarts. A new race of sovereigns had 
 been installed by Southern and Saxon hands. It was re- 
 garded by these mountaineers with distrust and fear. They 
 had no great cause to look back with satisfaction to their 
 treatment under the sway of the fallen house. But there 
 appeared more risk than ever of molestation from the new 
 and alien rulers ; and so, partly from loyalty to the Stuarts, 
 and partly from distrust of the Hanoverian dynasty, there 
 existed at this time among the Highlanders a wide-spread 
 disaffection and longing for a restoration. 
 
 At last these feelings found vent in open insurrec- 
 tion, and the outbreak of 1715 began. Among the chiefs 
 who appeared in arms came the Earl of Seaforth, head 
 of the Mackenzie clan. With him marched a gallant 
 company of Murchisons, including two of note, John and 
 Donald, uncle and nephew, the former bearing a commission 
 in the Prince's army, and bringing with him all the men he 
 
ANCESTRY. 5 
 
 could muster in Lochalsh, the latter holding rank as colonel, 
 his commission having been sent over by the Pretender 
 himself in a quaint large ivory " snuff-mull," inscribed with 
 the words " JAMES EEX. FOKWARD AND SPAEE NOT." l 
 
 Among those who fell in the disastrous battle of Sheriff - 
 muir was the great-grandfather of the subject of this bio- 
 graphy. Colonel Donald, however, made good his escape, 
 and soon afterwards appeared in his native district, where, 
 amid narrow inlets and bays, rough glens and lonely moors, 
 he could bid defiance to the conquerors. 
 
 Donald Murchison was certainly one of the most remark- 
 able Highlanders of his day. 2 Bred a lawyer at Edinburgh, 
 he united to the usual warlike virtues of the clansman a 
 shrewdness and knowledge of the world, which gave him 
 considerable influence as the agent and friend of the Earl 
 of Seaforth. After the battle of Sheriffmuir, when the 
 Earl went into exile in France, Donald appears to have 
 gone back to the mountains of Kintail. Doubtless, in 
 1719, he took his share in the rude fortifying of Eilandonan 
 Castle, of which, as we have seen, his family had been here- 
 ditary castellans, and saw with dismay its walls battered 
 to pieces by the guns of three English war -vessels. Nor 
 was he likely to be absent from his chief when the luckless 
 expedition of Spanish auxiliaries and Highlanders, marching 
 eastward for the invasion of the country, encamped in Glen- 
 
 1 This box was in the possession of Sir Roderick up to the time of his 
 death, and is now one of the family heirlooms in the keeping of his 
 nephew and heir, Mr. K. R. Murchison. It forms a conspicuous feature 
 in the picture of " Donald Murchison gathering Seaforth's rents in Kin- 
 tail," painted for him by Sir Edwin Landseer, and bequeathed by him to 
 the National Gallery at Edinburgh. 
 
 * For an account of him see Chambers's Domestic Annals of Scotland, 
 vol. iii. 
 
6 SIR ROBERT MURCHISON. 
 
 shiel. Seaforth escaped wounded, and Donald was not 
 among the prisoners. 
 
 The Seaforth estates were forfeited, but they lay in so 
 remote and inaccessible a region that the Commissioners of 
 the Forfeited Estates only in 1721 were able to procure a 
 factor bold enough to march westward to take possession of 
 them. Donald Murchison, however, had been intrusted 
 with their keeping by him whom he and all the native popu- 
 lation still regarded as the rightful laird. Hearing of the 
 approach of the new factor with a body of the King's troops, 
 he attacked them as they toiled through one of the savage 
 glens of the district, and not only stopped their further pro- 
 gress, but compelled the factor to give a bond of 500 that 
 he would never again attempt to carry out his duties in that 
 quarter. That he might have additional sanction for his 
 own proceedings, Donald even extorted authority from the 
 unfortunate official to act as deputy-factor for the Com- 
 missioners of Forfeited Estates, so that he could draw his 
 rents for the Earl either as the agent of the one Government 
 or of the other, as might be needful in each case. 
 
 Again, in the following year, a still larger party of sol- 
 diers made another attempt to gain possession of the rebel- 
 lious country. But once more Donald proved himself not 
 unworthy of the colonel's commission and the ivory snuff- 
 mull. By a clever piece of strategy he discomfited this 
 new invasion, and forced it to retire to its starting-place at 
 Inverness. 
 
 For ten years Donald Murchison administered the Sea- 
 forth estates. Even after his successful resistance to the 
 royal troops, such was his boldness that he would go per- 
 sonally to Edinburgh to see after the proper transmission 
 
ANCESTRY. 7 
 
 of the rents to the banished and attainted Earl. General 
 Wade, in reporting to George I. in 1725, writes that "the 
 rents [of the Seaforth lands] continue to be collected by one 
 Donald Murchison, a servant of the late Earl's, who remits 
 or carries the same to his master into France. . . . The last 
 year this Murchison marched in a public manner to Edin- 
 burgh to remit 800 to France, and remained fourteen days 
 there unmolested. I cannot omit observing to your Majesty 
 that this national tenderness the subjects of North Britain 
 have one for the other is a great encouragement for rebels 
 and attainted persons to return home from their banish- 
 ment." l 
 
 Though the " Coarnal/' as Donald was called then, and 
 as he still lives in old Eoss- shire story, preserved the estates 
 for the Seaforth family, risking often his life in the service 
 of his master, the Earl, on regaining his position in his 
 native country, treated his faithful ally with injustice and 
 neglect. Taking advantage of the lawlessness of the time, 
 he seized the charters and lands of the Murchisons. Donald, 
 finding reparation hopeless, and despairing of success in any 
 appeal to a Government which had no strong reason to be 
 very active on behalf of a man who had given it so much 
 trouble, retired to the east side of the island, and died of a 
 broken heart, childless and in poverty. 2 He was buried by 
 the Conon, but the memory of his deeds still lingers among 
 the hills which he guarded so long and so well Nearly a 
 
 1 Wade's Report, in Appendix to Burt's Letters, 2d edit. (1822), ii. 
 p. 280. 
 
 2 For these particulars I am indebted to Dr. Corbet of Beauly, whose 
 grandfather was a grandson of Colonel Donald's brother, and who has 
 made the family genealogy a matter of investigation. See also Chambers, 
 op. cit., and Anderson's Scottish Nation, vol. iii. p. 731. 
 
8 SIR RODERICK MURCHISON. 
 
 century and a half after he had passed away, a monument 
 was raised to him by his kinsman, Sir Eoderick Murchison ; 
 and now, as the tourist sails through the narrow Kyles of 
 Skye, and marks on one hand the mouldering barracks of 
 the Hanoverian soldiery, on the other the crumbling walls 
 of the castle of Eilandonan, a granite obelisk on one of the 
 headlands of Lochalsh recalls to him the deeds of one of 
 the most disinterested men of that wild time. 
 
 Donald's brother, Murdoch, raised an action at law for 
 recovery of the charters ; but the renewed outbreak of 1745 
 came on. He took part in it, and died from the effects of 
 wounds received at Culloden. Thus the action disappeared, 
 and so did the ancestral property of the Murchisons. 1 
 
 John Murchison, farmer at Auchtertyre, in Lochalsh, Sir 
 Eoderick's great-grandfather, has been already referred to as 
 one of those who fell at Sheriffmuir. Traditions still linger 
 in the north as to his feats of strength; one large stone, 
 in particular, weighing about half a ton, being pointed out 
 as having been carried by him for some distance to form 
 part of a wall which he needed to build on his farm. 
 
 Of Alexander, grandfather of Sir Eoderick, little has been 
 handed down. He continued to rent the farm of Auchtertyre, 
 
 1 Sir Roderick was never able accurately to trace his relationship to 
 Colonel Donald. He seems to have regarded the hero as his great-grand- 
 uncle, but the connexion was yet more distant. His grandfather was a 
 third cousin of the Colonel, so that his own kinship was of that shadowy 
 kind in which Highland genealogists delight. Sir Roderick belonged thus 
 to an offshoot from the main stem of the Murchisons in whose hands the 
 little paternal property had been. His grandfather's great-grandfather 
 had owned it. Information from Dr. Corbet. 
 
 Both Boswell and Dr. Johnson, in their narratives of their tour in the 
 Hebrides, refer with gratitude to the attention shown to them by a Mr. 
 Murchison, factor for the laird of Macleod, in Glenelg, who sent them a 
 bottle of rum, and an apology for not being able to entertain them in his 
 house. 
 
ANCESTRY. 9 
 
 and had to struggle with but slender means ; yet, like his 
 predecessors who had not fallen in fight, he reached a good 
 old age, living on even till he was ninety-nine, and saw the 
 fortunes of the family retrieved by his eldest son, Kenneth, 
 whom he actually outlived. 
 
 It was in the year 1751 that this Kenneth came into 
 the world at Auchtertyre. He studied Medicine at the 
 Colleges of Glasgow and Edinburgh, took the diploma of 
 the Eoyal College of Surgeons in London, and while still 
 a young man went out as surgeon to India, where he 
 remained for seventeen years. A lucrative appointment 
 at Luckiiow enabled him to amass a competent fortune, 
 with which, coming home again about the year 1786, 
 he not long afterwards purchased from his maternal uncle, 
 Mackenzie of Lentron, the small estate of Tarradale, in the 
 eastern part of the county of Eoss. He appears to have 
 been a man of much force of character, a thorough Celt, 
 generous, yet with enough of worldly wisdom to keep him 
 from losing his possessions as his forefathers had done. He 
 wrote his journals in Gaelic, but used the Greek characters, 
 which he held to express the sound of his native tongue better 
 than Eoman letters could do. Having gratified the ambi- 
 tion, so common in Scotland, to become a laird, he kept up old 
 Highland ways, and as long as he lived at Tarradale had as 
 one of his retainers a piper, who also played the harp. Fond 
 of antiquities, he devoted himself to those of Tarradale and 
 its neighbourhood, and made a collection of urns and other 
 objects found in tumuli and elsewhere on the estate. He 
 was one of the original members of the Highland Society of 
 London, and a warm friend of the scheme of the British 
 Fisheries for the employment of the people of the Western 
 
10 SIR RODERICK MURCHISON. [1792-5. 
 
 Highlands and Islands. In those days doctors were scarce in 
 the Highlands, hence Dr. Murchison's house formed a centre 
 of attraction to the sick and maimed for many miles round. 
 As he took no fees, his popularity became more wide-spread 
 than was wholly pleasant, so that in the end he set on foot 
 an agitation which resulted in the erection of the present 
 Northern Infirmary at Inverness. 
 
 In the year 1791 he married the daughter of Mackenzie 
 of Fairburn, lineal representative of the Kory More or Big 
 Eoderick Mackenzie to whom these estates had been granted 
 by James V. She as well as her brother, of whom more 
 will be told in later pages was born in the old tower of 
 Fairburn, the characteristic Highland fortalice of the sept, 
 guarding the entrance of one of the glens which open upon 
 the lowlands of the Black Isle. 
 
 The first-fruits of this marriage appeared at Tarradale, on 
 the 19th of February 1792, when the subject of this memoir 
 saw the light. He received the name of Eoderick, after his 
 maternal grandfather, Eoderick Mackenzie of Fairburn, a 
 jolly old laird, who lived for more than ninety years, al- 
 though, as he used to say of himself, in regard to whisky, 
 claret, or other potations, he was " a perfect sandbank." 1 A 
 second name was given to the boy that of Impey, after Sir 
 Elijah Impey, an intimate friend of his father's. 2 
 
 For three years the family continued to reside at Tarra- 
 
 i This expression has been handed down by Sir Roderick Murchison. 
 With reference to it Dr. Corbet informs me that he is himself in posses- 
 sion of old Fairburn's silver quaich or drinking-cup, and that it does not 
 hold more than an ordinary wine-glass. But of course the size of the cup 
 tells us nothing as to how often it was replenished. 
 
 * In one of Sir Roderick's journals the following notice occurs bearing 
 upon this period of his life : " Old John Gladstone's wife was the dearest 
 friend my poor mother had. She was a Miss Annie Robertson, daughter 
 
jiri.ge 10. 
 
 TARRADALE, ROSS-SHIRE 
 
 THE BIRTHPLACE OF SIR RODERICK MURCHISON. 
 
1792-5.] ANCESTRY. 11 
 
 dale. This period, however, was too brief to fix any early 
 Highland impressions on the memory of the future geologist, 
 although he used afterwards to say that he ought to have his 
 Celtic proclivities fully developed, for he had been nursed 
 by the " sonsie " miller's wife of Tarradale, who hushed him 
 to sleep with Gaelic lullabies, and no doubt, after the fashion 
 of the country, gave him now and then, when he whimpered, 
 a taste of the famous whisky distilled on the adjoining 
 lands of Ferrintosh. 
 
 These three years of infancy formed the only prolonged 
 residence which Sir Eoderick Murchison ever made in the 
 Highlands. His later visits were only for a few weeks at a 
 time in summer or autumn. That early stay at Tarradale 
 might have been indefinitely prolonged, so as to change the 
 whole tenor of his life, had his father's health continued good. 
 A delicacy, however, brought on probably by his Indian 
 experiences, induced Mr. Murchison to quit his northern 
 home for a milder residence in the south of England. 
 
 Among the earliest recollections which his son Eoderick 
 retained was one dating from the time of this southward 
 migration. These were the days of highwaymen, and the 
 party had journeyed armed. The father, always anxious 
 that his son and heir should be a manly little fellow, pre- 
 sented one day a pistol at his head, bidding him stand fire. 
 His wife, fortunately, was sitting by and snatched away 
 
 of the Provost of Dingwall, Ross-shire. When my father married he pro- 
 posed that the bride's great friend and bridesmaid should stay with them. 
 Finding that she was in very delicate health, he attended to all her ail- 
 ments for a year or more, and when I was brought into the world, the first 
 young lady's lap on which I was dandled was that of the mother of the 
 present Chancellor of the Exchequer. She has often told me this herself, 
 and has expressed how much she owed to my father for his kind medical 
 attention." 
 
12 SIR RODERICK MURCHISON. [1792-5. 
 
 the child, when the pistol, which was not supposed to be 
 loaded, went off, and a volley of slugs passed through the 
 window. 
 
 In a jotting found among his papers, and bearing date 
 August 14th, 1854, the son thus recalls the memory of his 
 parents : " My father was a good violin-player, and had a 
 fine Cremona, on which he brought out his native and 
 Jacobite airs with much feeling ; whilst my mother, dear 
 soul, though never a skilful musician, played her reels on 
 the harpsichord with so much point and zest that even now 
 I can bring her full to my mind's eye whilst I was dancing 
 my first Highland fling to the tunes of ' Caber Fey ' or 
 < Tulloch Gorum.'" 
 
 The change from Tarradale to the south of England did 
 not avert the malady from which the invalid was suffering. 
 He died in the year 1796. Of his closing days the follow- 
 ing notes have been penned by his son : " A recollection of 
 him, doubtless often since brought to my memory by my dear 
 mother, is that while my father was in the last stage of the 
 disorder (liver- complaint and dropsy) of which he died, my 
 little brother and self were sent from Bath to the then 
 sequestered village of Bathampton, where he took leave of 
 us. 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." 
 
 On the death of her husband, Mrs. Murchison moved 
 with her two boys to Edinburgh, where she took the house 
 No. 26 George Street. 1 As soon as age allowed they were 
 
 1 The younger son, Kenneth, became Governor of Singapore, and after- 
 wards of Penang. 
 
1799.] SCHOOL-DAYS. 13 
 
 placed under the instructions of Bishop Sandford. Most of 
 the Jacobites being either Catholics or Episcopalians, she 
 found herself among friends in the small gathering which 
 the disestablished Church could muster at that time in the 
 metropolis of the north. Two years before his death her 
 elder son revisited the little chapel near Charlotte Square to 
 which his mother used to bring him. The lapse of more 
 than seventy years had not wiped away the recollection of 
 these early days, and he could yet recall how, one Sunday, 
 their fat little cook Peggie, having incautiously ventured 
 westward to her mistress's chapel, returned abruptly to the 
 house, inveighing with indignation at the profanity of an 
 organ, " for she cou'dna bide to hae the house o' God turned 
 intil a playhouse." 
 
 The widow, still young and attractive, was not long in 
 finding a second husband in Colonel Eobert Macgregor 
 Murray, one of the younger brothers of the Chief of the 
 Macgregors. He, as well as his brothers, had been on inti- 
 mate terms with Mr. Murchison in India, so much so that 
 the Chief and his brother, Colonel Alexander, with Sir 
 Elijah Impey, were left as guardians to the two boys. 
 
 The marriage of his mother broke up the home -life of 
 young Eoderick. Her husband was called to Ireland to 
 aid in suppressing rebellion there, and as she determined 
 to accompany him, it became necessary to place the boy, 
 now in his seventh year, at school. Accordingly, in the 
 year 1799, he was sent to the grammar-school of Durham. 
 
 More than half a century afterwards he spoke of the 
 pang of the parting from his mother, and from Sally, the 
 Dorsetshire lass, to whose tuition he used to attribute the 
 English accent which he retained through life. Before 
 
14 SIR RODERICK MURCHISON. [ITW- 
 
 leaving Edinburgh he could already read the newspapers 
 with emphasis, and recite various pieces of verse. 
 
 But now a new and strange life opened out to him. At 
 Durham he was domiciled, with some twenty other boys, in 
 the house of one Wharton a kindly man, who taught them 
 French, and who, though himself a strict Catholic, never 
 attempted to taint any of his pupils with a bias towards 
 Popery. 
 
 Six years passed away at Durham. They could hardly 
 be called years of study. The boy, indeed, toiled in 
 some fashion into the sixth book of the Iliad, crossed the 
 "pons" in Euclid, and picked up a little French, besides 
 the ordinary rudiments of an English education. But the 
 somewhat morose and severe manners of the head -master 
 were not of a kind to make learning pleasant. Nor in 
 the discipline of the school, stern enough in its way, and 
 often aided from a bundle of hazel rods, was there check 
 sufficient to control the waywardness of the wilder boys. 
 Among these Eoderick, or " Dick," as they called him, was 
 always a ringleader. Breaking bounds was the least of his 
 offences. Many an expedition did he lead against the town 
 boys, and when not engaged in actual offensive warfare, he 
 would be found drilling his school-fellows in military 
 exercises. 
 
 Pranks, too, of the dare-devil kind were a favourite 
 pastime. At one time he would be seen sitting on a pro- 
 jecting ornament or corner-spout of the highest tower of the 
 Cathedral, to the horror of his comrades, who lay down in 
 abject fright upon the "leads." He filled up more than 
 the usual list of boyish escapades with gunpowder and 
 on treacherous ice. The broken ground on which the 
 
1805.] SCHOOL-DAYS. 15 
 
 romantic old city of Durham stands lent itself eminently 
 to such feats. There was one exploit which deserves a pass- 
 ing mention, since it was, perhaps, his earliest attempt to 
 explore what lies under ground. Just beyond the archway 
 leading to the Prebends' Bridge lay the open mouth of a 
 drain which had its other end on the banks of the Wear, 
 some hundred yards below. It had been a boast among the 
 boys to get down to the bottom of the vertical mouth. But 
 " Dick" one day undertook to force his way down the whole 
 length of the conduit to its farther opening at the side of 
 the river. Having dropt into his hole he soon found, as he 
 advanced on hands and knees, that to turn was impossible. 
 So, scaring many a rat by the way, he crept down, and at 
 last, with scratched skin and torn raiment, and probably 
 with what Trinculo styled " an ancient and fish-like smell," 
 he emerged to the light of day, amid the hurrahs of his 
 expectant school-fellows. 
 
 His stepfather and his mother, during part of his stay at 
 Durham, rented Newton House, near Bedale, in the North 
 Eiding, whither, in vacation-time, he repaired to exhaust him- 
 self in the delights of a pony and terriers. There, too, it was 
 that the military life distinctly shaped itself in his mind. His 
 maternal uncle, General Mackenzie of Fairburn, seeing his 
 active habits, told him that in due time he would make a 
 good soldier. "From that day," he remarks, "I read and 
 thought of nothing but military heroes." 
 
CHAPTEE II. 
 
 FIRST YEARS OF A SOLDIER'S LIFE. 
 
 THE six years' schooling at Durham, such as it was, 
 formed all the connected general education which Murchison 
 received, though he tried to supplement it after a fashion a 
 couple of years later at Edinburgh. It was thought to be 
 amply sufficient as a groundwork for the profession of a 
 soldier ; the more special training needed for the military 
 life could be obtained elsewhere. Accordingly, in the year 
 1805, being now thirteen years of age, he was taken 
 to the Military College of Great Marlow. Late in life he 
 could recall how his stepfather sang amusing songs to cheer 
 him on the way ; how, on arriving in London, they " were 
 quartered at the Spring Gardens coffeehouse;" and how 
 surprised he was to see, " in the box next to us, gloating 
 over his beefsteak and onions, the corpulent John, Duke of 
 Norfolk." 
 
 At Marlow his aptitude for study was not more 
 marked than it had been at Durham. His six books of 
 Homer and the Latin which had been flogged into him 
 were no help in aiding him to solve even simple questions 
 
1805.] FIRST YEARS OF A SOLDIER'S LIFE. 17 
 
 in geometry and arithmetic. He was rejected, or, in the 
 language of his comrades, " spun," and sent back to " mug," 
 or study. " I could not do," he says, " the commonest 
 things in geometry, and was a bad arithmetician a foible 
 which has remained with me." 
 
 When at length he had passed as a Cadet, he continued to 
 introduce a fair amount of frolic among his not very arduous 
 duties. C. 26 for that was his number in the third com- 
 pany became as conspicuous a ringleader among the boister- 
 ous youths at Marlow as he had already been among the 
 boys at Durham. He succeeded, however, at the same time, 
 in acquiring some military habits, and a slender knowledge 
 of tactics and drawing. He now, for the first time, had to 
 learn subjects really interesting to him, and, as he had 
 been formerly in the habit of drilling his school-fellows for 
 mere amusement, it was now a congenial and not very diffi- 
 cult task to become a good drill-serjeant. From this time, 
 too, dates the development of that singular faculty he had 
 of grasping the main features of a district. His exercises in 
 military drawing at Marlow first drew out this faculty, and 
 led to the future rapidity and correctness of his " eye for 
 a country," to which, in his scientific career, he owed so 
 much. 
 
 As a reminiscence of these Marlow days he writes : 
 " As each cadet cleaned his own shoes and belts, and black- 
 balled his own cartridge-box, we really knew what a soldier 
 ought to do. French polish was then unknown, and the 
 blacking which we bought of old ' Drummer Cole' required 
 much elbow-grease to bring out the shine ; so that I shall 
 never forget, when the Duke of Kent (the father of our 
 gracious Queen) reviewed us, how I admired his highly- 
 
 VOL. I. B 
 
18 SIR RODERICK M URCHISON. [isoe. 
 
 polished, well-made Hessian boots, and his tight-fitting white 
 leather pantaloons." 
 
 Those who remember the veteran geologist in his later 
 days, and recall the military bearing which marked him up 
 to the last, will readily appreciate how strong an impress 
 these Marlow days left upon him. While a cadet he was 
 also somewhat of a dandy. He preserved memoranda of the 
 names of the titled people he met when he paid a visit ; 
 how he delighted in the " smart curricle" of one distinguished 
 acquaintance ; how he rode " the well-conditioned hunters 
 or chargers" of another; how he dined at a fine old mansion 
 one day, and played at whist with the young aristocracy of 
 the place the next. He had good opportunity for indulging 
 these tastes during a visit which he paid in 1806 to his 
 uncle, General Mackenzie, who was at that time command- 
 ing a militia force at Hull. And yet other qualities of his 
 nature were also developing themselves. His uncle, who 
 kept a diary, made the following entry on 29th January 
 1806 : " This day my dear nephew Eoderick left me. He 
 is a charming boy, manly, sensible, generous, warm-hearted 
 in short, possessing every possible good attribute. I think 
 he has also talents to make a figure in any profession. That 
 which he has chosen is a soldier. He goes back to Marlow 
 College on the 3d of next month." 
 
 The following year, at the age of fifteen, he was gazetted 
 Ensign in the 36th regiment, but did no regimental duty for 
 some time after his appointment. He writes of this epoch 
 in his life : " For the first six months after I became an 
 officer I was supposed to be completing my studies ! In 
 reality I was amusing myself with all sorts of dissipation at 
 Bath, where I passed my holidays driving ' tandems' and 
 wearing clanking spurs. 
 
i8os.] FIRST YEARS OF A SOLDIERS LIFE. 19 
 
 " On leaving Marlow I was removed to Edinburgh, where 
 my mother and relatives lived, and was placed in the house 
 of Mr. Alexander Manners, the respected Librarian of the 
 Faculty of Advocates, where I was associated with five or 
 six other youths all older than myself. Having a recruiting 
 party in the city under my orders, and with plenty of money 
 to spend and balls to dance at, it may be well conceived that 
 I did not gather together much knowledge. Still I picked 
 tip a few crumbs, which were destined to produce some fruit 
 in after times. Unquestionably, this winter in Edinburgh 
 materially influenced my future character. For example, I 
 took lessons in French, Italian, German, and mathematics. 
 I also attended a debating club, and wrote (such as they 
 were) two essays on political subjects, of which of course I 
 was profoundly ignorant. While the young powdered mili- 
 tary fop (pig-tails and powder were then in the ascendant) 
 affected to despise all dominies and philosophers, I could 
 not be one of the table presided over by the bland and 
 courteous old Manners without picking up many useful 
 hints for future guidance." 
 
 Though he may have made some progress with his books 
 at Edinburgh, he does not appear to have been quite as sure 
 of his success in that way as he was of his mastery over the 
 kicking horse in Leatham's riding-school. At the same time 
 he took lessons in thrusting and parrying with the foil 
 from an old French valet-de-chambre in the service of 
 the Comte d'Artois, afterwards Charles x., who was then 
 living in exile at Holyroodhouse. As the result of these 
 various accomplishments he came to have such a good opinion 
 of himself that when, at last, in the winter of 1807-8, he 
 joined his regiment at the barracks of Cork, great was his 
 
20 SIR RODERICK MURCHISON. [isos. 
 
 chagrin to find the officers very different from the high- 
 bred dandies he had expected them to be. They seem 
 to have been for the most part quiet, well- disciplined old 
 soldiers, who knew their work and did it, and who, more- 
 over, had seen a good deal of active service on the Continent, 
 in India, and in South America. He was no longer the 
 important personage he had lately been with the " recruiting 
 party under his orders." But in a little while he discovered, 
 that what his comrades lacked in outward show they more 
 than countervailed in the best qualities of soldiers. He found 
 that the regiment had been a favourite with Sir Arthur 
 Wellesley in India. His messmates could tell many a story 
 of the cool daring of their old Colonel, Eobert Burne ; how 
 he led his men at the storming of Seringapatam ; and how, 
 when at Buenos Ayres, the Spaniards had brought up eight 
 guns that completely enfiladed the road by which the British 
 force was retiring, he halted his brave fellows and said 
 quietly to them, " Now, my lads, I Ve come to lead you 
 once more to an assault. You see these guns ! If we don't 
 take and spike them our regiment will be swept away;" 
 and then how he plucked a flower, and coolly placing it in 
 his button-hole, drew his sword, and in a quarter of an hour 
 had, with his grenadiers, spiked every gun and driven the 
 enemy back into the town. 
 
 Such tales vividly impressed the imagination of the 
 young Ensign. His ideal of a military hero had hitherto 
 been his handsome young uncle, General Mackenzie, in the 
 full blaze of martial uniform, and it was his ambition to 
 become the General's aide-de-camp. But he now came into 
 contact with a real tried hero, whom he thenceforth set up 
 as his model. 
 
isos.] FIRST YEARS OF A SOLDIER'S LIFE. 21 
 
 Colonel Burne was an excellent specimen of a type of 
 officer now probably extinct. Cool and daring on the field 
 of battle, lie was a severe disciplinarian. His piercing dark- 
 brown eye proved quick to detect a careless pig-tail, or a 
 failure of pipe-clay either in gloves or breeches. He had 
 drilled his men to the most perfect precision after the 
 method then in vogue, insomuch that his had become what 
 was called a " crack regiment" at the camp on the Curragh. 
 But with all this attention to the laborious system of train- 
 ing which prevailed in his time, he knew how to unbend 
 after his day's work was past. At the mess-table he would 
 sit habitually from five till ten o'clock, setting an example to 
 all his officers in the potation of port. He could not tolerate 
 a drunken man, and he despised a young fledgling Ensign to 
 whom illimitable draughts of his own favourite beverage 
 proved in any way disastrous. He himself never showed 
 any indication of being in the least degree affected, save that 
 " his nose was gradually assuming that purple colour and 
 bottle-shape which rendered him so conspicuous in the sub- 
 sequent Peninsular war." Such was the brave and jovial 
 leader whom the young Ensign of the 36th set before him- 
 self for imitation. 
 
 The regiment moved to Fermoy in the spring of 1808 ; 
 but shortly thereafter a small army of about eight thousand 
 men assembled at Cork for foreign service. Its destination 
 remained secret, though it was shrewdly suspected to be de- 
 signed for South America to retrieve there the honour of 
 the British arms. The charge of it was given to Sir Arthur 
 Wellesley, with General Mackenzie as his second in com- 
 mand. The latter resolved to take with him his nephew 
 Roderick as an extra aide-de-camp. Such a post had been 
 
22 SIR RODERICK MURCHISON. [im. 
 
 the dream of the young Ensign's life ever since he had en- 
 tered on his military career, and it seems to have impressed 
 him more each time he saw his uncle in all the pomp of 
 command. 
 
 But the projects both of uncle and nephew were rudely 
 broken. The unexpected successes of the rising of the 
 people of Spain against their French invaders at once 
 drew the attention of the British Government to that 
 country. The expedition was ordered to proceed not to 
 South America, but to Spain. With this change of destina- 
 tion came also an alteration in the command. General 
 Mackenzie was not to accompany the force, and the ex- 
 pectant aide-de-camp had to bear his mortification as he 
 best could. 
 
 But it was still his destiny to join the expedition, not on 
 the Staff, but carrying the colours of the 36th, for in passing 
 through Fermoy to take the command, Sir Arthur Welles- 
 ley left orders for that regiment to proceed to Cork within 
 twenty-four hours. A hurried gathering of goods and 
 chattels, a march of twenty miles, an inspection in the 
 streets of Cork by Sir Arthur himself, and then a string 
 of boats filled with the red-coats slipping down to the 
 Cove and to the transports thus suddenly the young 
 soldier of but sixteen summers found himself face to face 
 with the stern realities of war. 
 
CHAPTEE III. 
 
 SIX MONTHS OF THE PENINSULAR WAE. 
 
 BRITISH expeditions had come to hold but a poor reputa- 
 tion, when the present century began. The despatch of a 
 new one created little enthusiasm, or even interest. Long 
 years of war had made the minds of men familiar with 
 campaigns and battles and sieges. And these warlike 
 operations were now spread over so wide a field that it 
 would have been hard to tell to what quarter a fresh expe- 
 dition would, with most probability, be sent. With this 
 low military prestige there existed also a wide-spread 
 feeling of indifference, sometimes bordering on contempt, for 
 the profession of a soldier. The rank and file of the army 
 contained a large infusion of the lowest orders of the 
 community. Enlistment was in the hands of agents who 
 received a profit according to the numbers they could 
 induce to join the service. A man who had proved himself 
 unfit for any honest calling was yet good enough for a 
 soldier. And thus it became common to regard the " listing " 
 of a son or brother as a kind of family disgrace. 
 
 Of the private himself but slender care was taken by the 
 
24 SIR RODERICK MURCHISON. [isos, 
 
 authorities. He enlisted for life, and could look forward 
 to being permitted to leave the service on a small pension 
 only when ill-health or age at last made him useless. As 
 a rule, he could neither read nor write. There was then no 
 daily newspaper press recounting to every town and village 
 in the three kingdoms the doings of his regiment, men- 
 tioning even his own name should he distinguish him- 
 self ; no associations for the help of the sick and wounded ; 
 no lady-nurses venturing from dainty homes into the rough 
 scenes of war ; no frequent post bringing him letters and 
 papers from the fatherland to show him that he was the 
 object of kindly solicitude to his native country. "When 
 he was carried away into service abroad, it was not in 
 a roomy steam-transport, but in a sloop or brig drawn 
 perhaps from the coasting trade. And yet in spite of all 
 these wants, of many of which he was happily unconscious, 
 in spite, too, of pipe-clay and blackball, of plastering his 
 queue, and burnishing his musket, he could be trained into 
 an excellent soldier, and he went through his hardships 
 with that endurance and boldness which more than restored 
 the reputation of the British army. 
 
 On the 12th July 1808 the small expeditionary force set 
 sail from Cork, and met with no mishap until it came to 
 anchor off the coast of Gallicia. Owing to some uncertainty 
 as to the state of affairs in the Peninsula, the disembarka- 
 tion was delayed for a few days, and the transports moved 
 southward to the Portuguese coast. The young ensign of the 
 36th regiment, cooped up in a small brig, had been in the 
 surgeon's hands, and continued still an invalid. But at 
 the order for landing his kit was soon packed. Like the 
 other officers he took ashore three days' provisions, beside 
 
1808.] LANDS IN PORTUGAL. 25 
 
 his greatcoat and knapsack, while he had to carry on his 
 shoulders the colours of the regiment. Of this time he 
 writes : 
 
 "Early on the 1st of August, the 36th, forming part of 
 the first brigade, disembarked with the 60th Eifles and 
 other regiments under General Fane. Fortunately it was 
 a fine calm hot day, with little or no surf on the sterile and 
 uninhabited shore, with its wide beach and hillocks of blown 
 sand. The inhabitants of Figuiera, on the opposite bank 
 of the river, stood under their variously-coloured umbrellas, 
 and my boat being to the extreme left, I could scan the 
 motley group, in which monks and women predominated. 
 Just as I was gazing around, and as our boat touched the 
 sand, the Commodore's barge rapidly passed with our bright- 
 eyed little General. Perhaps I am the only person now 
 (1854) living, who saw the future Wellington place for the 
 first time his foot on Lusitania, followed by his aide-de- 
 camp, Fitzroy Somerset, afterwards Lord Eaglan. He 
 certainly was not twenty paces from me, and the cheerful 
 confident expression of his countenance at that moment 
 has ever remained impressed on my mind. The disem- 
 barkation being unopposed, you would think I had nothing 
 to record. But the young ensign, with his glazed cocked 
 hat, square to the front, his long white gloves, his tight belts, 
 and well-filled knapsack and haversack, found it no easy 
 matter to obey the orders of the fidgety General Fane, who, 
 whilst our feet slipped back on the loose sand, was en- 
 deavouring to make us move as if on the Brighton race- 
 course ! " 
 
 Of this toilsome march, and of the subsequent operations 
 of the army, the young soldier wrote a minute and earnest 
 
26 SIR RODERICK MURCHISON. [isos. 
 
 account two days after the battle of Vimieira, in a letter to 
 his uncle, General Mackenzie, which, with all its tediousness 
 of detail, shows no ordinary powers of observation, and grasp 
 of the general plan of the military proceedings : 
 
 " VIMIEIRA, 23d August 1808. 
 
 " MY DEAR UNCLE, Having been prevented so very long 
 a time from writing to you, on account of not knowing to 
 what part of the Mediterranean you are ordered, I am re- 
 solved at last to send this letter to Sicily, and let it run the 
 hazard of a ship sailing from Lisbon to that island. If you 
 had been in England during the whole of the time in which 
 we were acting against the French in this country, what 
 pleasure it would have given me to have sent you from the 
 scenes of action the last accounts of them ; but in such 
 ignorance was I of the country you were in, that in the only 
 letter which I have had from my mother since I left Ire- 
 land, she informed me only of your having proceeded in the 
 ' Pomona' frigate to the Mediterranean ; that it was probable 
 you would touch at some of the Spanish ports, whither it 
 was then supposed Sir Arthur Wellesley's expedition would 
 proceed ; and that in case of meeting with me, you intended 
 taking me on with you as your aide-de-camp. I shall en- 
 deavour in this letter to give a detailed account of our pro- 
 ceedings, as I am certain you will be pleased with it, incorrect 
 as it may be in some respects, and far as it must be from 
 being a general one, on account of my humble situation in 
 the army. 
 
 " Sir Arthur Wellesley, after having proceeded to Corunna 
 in order to hear of the movements of the Spaniards, wrote to 
 Admiral Sir Charles Cotton off the Tagus, and requested him 
 to co-operate. The landing of the troops in Mondego Bay 
 
1808.] LANDS IN PORTUGAL. 27 
 
 was then determined upon, and, on the 1st of August, the 
 36th and 40th infantry, and some rifles, disembarked on the 
 south side of the river Mondego, under General Fane, exactly 
 opposite the town of Figuiera. The troops passed the bar 
 of the river chiefly in small schooners which trade along the 
 coast, and also in Portuguese boats. 
 
 " The brigade being formed was then marched in open 
 columns along the coast, chiefly through very heavy sands, 
 about two leagues, and encamped near the village of Lavaos, 
 where Sir Arthur established head-quarters for the night. 
 As by his orders two shirts and two pair of stockings and a 
 great-coat were to compose the whole of the baggage of 
 officers and soldiers, and that not such a thing as a donkey 
 or any other animal was procurable, our whole kit, including 
 three days' provisions, was on our backs, which, with a brace 
 of pistols and the 36th regimental colours, loaded me abso- 
 lutely to the utmost of my strength. Even our old Colonel 
 was compelled to tramp through the sands this day, which 
 he did with the greatest alacrity. In four days the whole 
 of the troops and stores were landed without any loss. As 
 we were now to wait at Lavaos for the arrival of General 
 Spencer's force from Cadiz, we had it in our power to com- 
 municate with the shipping, and I was thus enabled to land 
 my boat-cloak and a few other necessary articles, which 
 have since been of infinite use to me on outlying picquets 
 (under walls and without tents) and guards, and to buy a 
 donkey to carry them, which little animal is with me at 
 present. In the course of three days General Spencer's force 
 arrived and immediately disembarked. The army being then 
 arranged and divided into six brigades, we were placed under 
 General Ferguson with the 40th and 71st regiments. The 
 
28 SIR RODERICK MURCHISON. [isos. 
 
 appointment of this excellent officer (who, I think, is your 
 particular friend) gave us, the 36th, great satisfaction. 
 
 " Sir Arthur Wellesley's orders, previous to our landing, 
 were most explicitly and clearly written, particularly in 
 explaining to the troops the nature of the service they were 
 about to enter upon, and directing the greatest attention to 
 be paid to the religion and customs of the Portuguese. We 
 were likewise given to understand by these orders, that 
 through the whole of the war we should be en bivouac, 
 and no tents allowed for officers or men. On the 10th the 
 whole army directed its march to Leyria. It was intended 
 at first to have marched only three leagues, but upon in- 
 formation being received that a force had proceeded by the 
 sea-coast, in order to have surprised some of our outposts, 
 our march was continued until three o'clock next morning. 
 We then halted and took up our stations on a cold, bleak 
 moor, about two leagues from Leyria, having marched up- 
 wards of twenty English miles. Next morning we marched 
 to Leyria (where the inhabitants had been maltreated by 
 Loison), and halted on the south side of the city, whence I 
 went in to inspect it. There we were joined by the Portu- 
 guese army, which did not exceed in strength 3000 men. 
 From what I could observe, there were about four squadrons 
 of cavalry, good-looking, well-mounted dragoons, being the 
 garde de police of Lisbon, who had made their escape from 
 thence on hearing of our disembarkation. The Portuguese 
 infantry was in a most wretched state of discipline. On the 
 1 3th the army marched two and a half leagues, and halted 
 at Lucero, about a mile and a half on the south side of the 
 beautiful ancient abbey of Batalha, where the Portuguese 
 gained that celebrated victory over the Spaniards which 
 
1808.] JfTV THE BATTLE OF RORIQA. 29 
 
 secured the independence of their country. At this place, 
 for the first time, we got hold of a few straggling Frenchmen. 
 Next day, the 14th, we proceeded to AlcobaQa, and halted 
 near it. The abbey is most magnificent, and delighted me 
 more than any public building I have seen. The library 
 and kitchen of the convent are well worthy of admiration. 
 Part of the French army had just quitted this place. 
 
 " We had proceeded next morning about half- way between 
 this town and Las Caldas ; when, approaching the small town 
 of Albaferam, the French appeared in sight. Their army was 
 drawn up in close column, and was ready for action. They 
 however continued their retreat, and we advanced and 
 halted near Las Caldas. 
 
 "Sir Arthur had received intelligence that the French 
 General Laborde was strongly entrenched in the mountainous 
 pass at the extremity of the valley in which the old Moorish 
 fort of Obidos stands, and that General Loison was at no 
 great distance from our right. The greatest part of the army 
 was advanced from the valley to force the pass, while 
 General Ferguson's brigade (with General Bowes's in its 
 rear) was sent off to the mountains on the left, with the in- 
 tention of cutting off Laborde's retreat. We were proceed- 
 ing in this direction when the French appeared upon our 
 flank, in consequence of which we formed line, and changing 
 direction advanced, as the fog cleared, towards the enemy. 
 We marched over about two leagues of hilly ground, and 
 when within about one mile and a half of the pass we un- 
 expectedly perceived the whole of the enemy in direct 
 march to it, and immediately afterwards our riflemen opened 
 their fire from the top of a hill upon one of the enemy's 
 columns, who returned a volley and retreated a short distance. 
 
30 SIR RODERICK MURCHISON. [isos. 
 
 " It feU to the lot of the Eifles, 5th, 9th, and 29th regi- 
 ments, to force the pass, and to the last regiment especially, 
 who, from the nature of the ground, could in some places only 
 ascend up the hill in single files. It was on this account 
 that the 29th lost so many officers and men, including the 
 gallant Colonel Lake, who was some paces in front of his 
 regiment when he fell. Just as we arrived at the foot of the 
 mountains our artillery was brought into play, which no 
 doubt annoyed the enemy's retreating columns, and three 
 companies of our regiment were detached in order to support 
 our light infantry, with the other light infantry of the 
 brigade. The enemy had moved off, however, from the shots 
 of the rifles, and the distant fire of a few pieces of our 
 artillery. The 40th regiment was then detached from our 
 brigade to cover the baggage, and as soon as the firing ceased 
 we pursued our march through the pass. Swiss and French- 
 men were lying dead on all sides. As soon as we got through, 
 General Ferguson's brigade, with the others which had not 
 been much engaged, formed on a very extensive heath, and 
 were advanced in front in order to charge the enemy if he 
 would stand ; but Monsieur would only permit a few stray 
 shots to be sent into his solid columns he had received 
 beating enough to satisfy him for one day. 1 
 
 " On the 19th the army moved on to Vimieira, and passed 
 over the very plateau on which we of the 36th were, two 
 days afterwards, to have an opportunity of signalizing 
 ourselves. 
 
 " The village of Vimieira is situated in a narrow valley, 
 amid rising hills. In our front, on to the south-east, is a 
 wood upon a low eminence ; and in the rear, on towards the 
 
 1 This was the engagement of Rolia or Roricja. 
 
1808.] THE BATTLE OF VIMIEIRA. 31 
 
 coast, are very high hills. On the summit of these hills, 
 which lie exactly between Vimieira and the sea, the greatest 
 part of the British army was posted. On a lower hill on 
 the right, and a little in front of the town, was the Light 
 Brigade, with the 20th regiment. This was an excellent 
 post of observation. On the hill on the left was the 40th 
 regiment, which was the left of our brigade, the 71st High- 
 landers on their right, and the 36th being in the hollow 
 exactly in the rear of the village. Close to our front was 
 a small river. The position was rather more than two 
 leagues from the sea. . . . We discovered some squad- 
 rons and picquets of French dragoons. Several officers 
 approached us, and one coming particularly near (I suppose 
 he was sketching), Captain Hellish (General Ferguson's 
 A.D.C.) offered the long odds to any one that, if permitted, 
 he would dismount him. 
 
 "On the following morning, the 21st, about nine o'clock, 
 the drums of the 40th regiment beat to arms. This was 
 occasioned by their outlying picquet being attacked by some 
 small party of the enemy which was greatly advanced. In 
 ten minutes we were formed. Our brigade, led by General 
 Ferguson, immediately crossed the little river and ascended 
 to the hill on which we were about to fight. We had hardly 
 commenced our uphill move before the advanced posts of 
 our centre, in the hollow near Vimieira, on our right, com- 
 menced a very heavy fire. We proceeded up the hill and 
 formed line under its brow. A brigade of artillery was 
 brought up with the greatest promptitude, and two guns, 
 under Lieutenant Locke, being placed on the rising ground 
 on our right, and the others on the left, three companies of 
 the 36th were detached to the edge of the hill on our right, 
 
32 SIR RODERICK MURCHISON. [isos. 
 
 in order to protect the guns, which were soon annoying the 
 advancing French close columns in the finest style with 
 shrapnell shells, whilst our rifles and light infantry were 
 firing in extended files as videttes. 
 
 " After some very hot and close work the centre of our 
 army, at the village of Vimieira, repulsed the enemy. There 
 General Anstruther's brigade, with the 50th regiment, re- 
 ceived the enemy in front of the village. Colonel Taylor, 
 who had charged with four troops, the only cavalry we had, 
 viz., of the 20th Light Dragoons, was killed in a wood, whilst 
 our heavy artillery, which was placed upon the hillock in 
 front of the village, cut up the enemy most dreadfully. The 
 50th charged them with the bayonet ; the 43d met them in 
 a narrow lane when in open column, and gallantly repulsed 
 them; the 52d and 97th were likewise warmly engaged 
 and thus the enemy was quite routed in their central or 
 main attack. 1 
 
 " 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 82d, 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 were pulled back, 
 
 1 The original of the present letter appears to have been lost. In the 
 copy of it from which the text has been printed, the remainder after 
 the above paragraph is in Murchison's own handwriting of a much later 
 date. 
 
1808.] THE BATTLE OF VIMIEIRA. 33 
 
 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 Lourinhao. 
 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 in Sir Arthur's 
 
 VOL. I. c 
 
34 SIR RODERICK MURCHISON. |>os. 
 
 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 on his 
 bum, and completed the rout of the enemy, taking General 
 Solignac of course prisoner. 1 
 
 " Had we possessed a squadron or two of dragoons on 
 the left wing, all the remaining force of Solignac's division, 
 which had been driven two miles to the north, or away from 
 the main body of Junot (which had retreated to the south), 
 would have been captured, for they were then a rabble. 
 But Sir Arthur knew his weakness in cavalry. He had 
 defeated a very superior force in crack style ; on our wing 
 we had indeed taken the General, and all the guns brought 
 against us; he also knew that the enemy had three full 
 regiments of cavalry in the field, whilst we had none. 
 Moreover, he was no longer commander, for old Sir Harry 
 Burrard, already on the ground, was his senior, and had 
 ordered a halt. 
 
 " Think, my dear uncle, with what pleasure I got a sheet 
 of long paper from the adjutant, and wrote my first account 
 of this glorious victory to my mother on a drum in the field, 
 
 1 This appears to be a mistake. Solignac was wounded, but the French 
 General taken prisoner was not he, but Brennier. See Wellington's De- 
 spatches, vol. iv. p. 96; Napier's Peninsular War, vol. i. p. 215. 
 
1808.] THE BATTLE OF VIMIE1RA. 35 
 
 in order that it might go home with the despatches. 1 We 
 shall soon go on to Lisbon, and then I expect we shall finish 
 off Monsieur Junot. I remain ever, my dear uncle, your 
 most affectionate nephew." 
 
 To this letter may be added one or two reminiscences 
 which he used to tell of these first Peninsular days. It was 
 no marvel if a stripling of sixteen, even though he had been 
 a ringleader in all rough sports and adventures at school 
 and military college, should have looked pale for a moment 
 on going into actual battle. His face caught the eye of the 
 bluff old veteran, Captain Hubbard, who gave him a good 
 draught of Hollands gin out of his canteen, and patted him 
 on the back, saying he would never feel so afterwards. 
 " And he was quite right," added the narrator ; " the first 
 start over, and you are ever afterwards one of a united mass 
 of brave men." 
 
 No trace of personal emotion was of course allowed to 
 escape in the business-like letter to his uncle from the 
 embryo aide-de-camp. And yet, brave and bold as he was, 
 he could not help a shudder at the first sight of the dead 
 and mangled bodies of the Swiss and French lying right 
 and left as his corps marched through the Pass of Roriqa. 
 But a more hideous recollection dwelt in his memory 
 through life. " When halting at a bivouac before we reached 
 Vimieira," he wrote, " a Portuguese volunteer on horseback 
 coolly unfolded before myself and others a large piece of 
 brown paper, in which he had carefully folded up like a 
 sandwich several pairs of Frenchmen's ears, his occupation 
 having been to follow us, and to cut off all these appendages 
 
 1 This letter, sealed with a bit of brown bread, has not been preserved. 
 
3G SIR RODERICK MURCHISON. [isos. 
 
 from men who were thoroughly well ' kilt ' doubtless to 
 produce them in coffee-house in Lisbon as proofs of the 
 number of the enemy he had slain ! " 
 
 The conduct of the 36th regiment, and its gallant colonel, 
 received high praise in the despatches of Sir Arthur "Wel- 
 lesley, to which, in after life, Murchison referred with pride, 
 as evidence that though his friends had almost all known 
 him only as a civilian and a man of peace, he had yet had 
 shared with his comrades in actual and successful fighting. 1 
 
 The subsequent events of this short campaign, with all 
 their memorable results in the Peninsula and at home, left 
 but little impress on the young ensign. He saw his favourite 
 general superseded by Sir Harry Burrard, and then by Sir 
 Hew Dalrymple. He was quite sure that the British forces 
 could have compelled Junot to surrender, or at least that 
 the French force never could have fought its way back 
 to Spain. Like so many of his fellow-countrymen, he looked 
 on the so-called Convention of Cintra " as stupid, if not dis- 
 graceful" In spite of what he has described to his uncle as 
 his " humble situation in the army," he seems to have had 
 no hesitation in deciding that the brilliant successes in which 
 he had taken part had been " shamefully lost " by subsequent 
 diplomacy. And he no doubt found consolation in repeating 
 
 1 In the official despatch from the field of Vimieira, Sir Arthur writes 
 thus : " In mentioning Colonel Burne and the 36th regiment upon this 
 occasion, I cannot avoid adding that the regular and orderly conduct of 
 this corps throughout the service, and their gallantry and discipline in 
 action, have been conspicuous." Wellington's Despatches, by Gurwood, 
 vol. iv. p. 96. Again, in a letter written next day to Lord Castlereagh, 
 he says, "You will see that I have mentioned Colonel Burne of the 36th 
 regiment iu a very particular manner ; and I assure you that there is no- 
 thing that will give me so much satisfaction as to learn that something 
 has been done for this old and meritorious soldier. The 36th regiment are 
 an example to this army." Op. cit. p. 100. 
 
1808.] LISBON IN THE PENINSULAR WAR. 37 
 
 to his comrades one or other of the contemporary squibs 
 which expressed the popular estimation of the respective 
 merits of the three commanders. 
 
 With the political side of the military events he troubled 
 himself but little. Of more interest at the moment were 
 the sights of Lisbon, in which his regiment was now quartered, 
 and the looks and ways of the inhabitants. The music of 
 the French bands before Junot's forces were embarked and 
 sent away from the Tagus, the black- eyed beauties of the 
 coffee-houses, and the filth of the luxurious city these 
 were the features of the sojourn in Lisbon which most 
 impressed themselves on his memory. Night after night 
 his room was perfumed by the burning of lavender in it, 
 and he was thereafter left to wage war against domestic 
 battalions hardly less numerous than those which he had 
 encountered at Vimieira. Or if he ventured out of doors 
 after nightfall, no little dexterity was needed to work his 
 way safely among the discharges of filth, which, in accordance 
 with the sanitary arrangements then in vogue, descended 
 from the windows, too often followed, instead of being 
 preceded, by the cry required by the police, of " Agua va ! " 
 
 The month of September wore away. At home fierce 
 outcry had arisen over the Convention by which the French 
 were removed from Portugal. The three commanders and 
 the leading generals were summoned back to England to un- 
 dergo examination before a Court of Inquiry, while vehement 
 denunciations were poured forth by the newspapers against 
 the conduct of affairs after the battle of Vimieira. Mean- 
 while events had transpired in Spain which wholly 
 altered the aspect of the war, and gave occasion to the 
 English Government to interfere more actively than ever 
 
38 SIR RODERICK MURCHISON. [im. 
 
 in the contest between Napoleon and the people of the 
 Peninsula. After the French armies had traversed Spain 
 and crushed the numerous but unconnected and ill-directed 
 attempts of the patriots to resist the march of the invaders, 
 the tide of war turned. A division of Napoleon's armies, 
 eighteen thousand in number, which had penetrated into the 
 most southerly province, was surrounded by the insurgents 
 and forced to lay down its arms. The enthusiasm of the 
 people blazed forth afresh from one end of the country to 
 the other. In England the joy was great and loudly ex- 
 pressed, that at last some check seemed likely to be placed 
 on the career of conquest of the man whom the country 
 hated and feared. Money, men, stores of every kind, were 
 freely promised to the patriots, and as freely, though with 
 sad want of judgment, supplied. 
 
 The British army, whatever might be thought or said 
 as to the mode in which the feat had been accom- 
 plished, had certainly compelled the French to evacuate 
 Portugal, and the Ministry of the day deemed it advis- 
 able that their victorious expedition, now lying at Lisbon 
 and watching the embarkation and removal of the French 
 regiments, should put itself in motion, march across the 
 country, enter Spain, and give effectual aid to the efforts of 
 the Spanish patriots. Orders to this effect reached Lisbon 
 early in October. Sir John Moore was put at the head of 
 the expeditionary force. He was told that not a French 
 soldier remained in the southern half of Spain, that Castanos 
 in the south, and Blake in the north, had collected large 
 armies, with supplies, and how enthusiastically the people 
 were everywhere rising against the invaders. He was 
 directed to enter Gallicia or Leon, and there to receive an 
 
ros] WITH SIR JOHN MOORE IN SPAIN. 39 
 
 additional force to be despatched under Sir David Baird 
 from England. In Spain his further movements were to be 
 regulated in concert with the Spanish generals. 
 
 Through the long melancholy marchings and counter- 
 marchings which began at Lisbon at the end of September, 
 and ended at Corunna in the middle of January, Murchison 
 took his place with the 36th. His regiment formed part of 
 the force sent round by Talavera under Sir John Hope. The 
 troops began to move as the rainy season was setting in. To 
 the rain succeeded the snows and frosts of an inclement 
 winter. From the Spaniards assistance neither in men nor 
 in means of transport, nor information of the movements 
 and strength of the common enemy, could be procured. To 
 the last there came from them in abundance promises of 
 powerful reinforcements, entreaties to the British commander 
 to advance, glowing pictures of the vast enthusiasm and re- 
 sources of Spain, and stories of the weakness and hesitation 
 of the French. In the midst of so much uncertainty it was 
 natural enough that the progress of the British force should 
 be but slow, and that this tardiness and apparent hesitation, 
 combined with the hardships of the weather, should have 
 caused some murmuring in the ranks. Among the mur- 
 murers was our Ensign of the 36th. His physical frame, 
 though strong, was sorely tried during these long marches, 
 with indifferent food, in the dead of winter. He could not 
 then judge what were the real operations of the army. He 
 was necessarily ignorant, as other subalterns were, of the 
 almost incredible difficulties of the noble-hearted Moore. 
 He could see only the toilsome and seemingly staggering 
 marches and halts and retreats. It appeared as if at head- 
 quarters there were no settled plan; as if the army were 
 
40 SIR RODERICK MURCHISON. [IFOS. 
 
 moved to and fro merely at random. So deeply was this 
 impression of inadequate generalship fixed on his mind, that 
 even late in life he continued to express himself as he might 
 have done in the march from Lugo, or on the heights of 
 Corimna. 1 
 
 Of the actual events of the campaign he has preserved 
 notes, chiefly of the various stages reached by his division 
 in its march from Lisbon through Portugal and Spain, with 
 a few personal reminiscences. In a little pocket note-book, 
 which went with him through the campaign, there are traces 
 
 1 The following note contains his deliberate judgment as to the general- 
 ship of Sir John Moore. It was written about the year 1854 : 
 
 " The chief mistakes of Moore can never, I think, be set aside, although, 
 doubtless, he had a most difficult task to play, and was grossly deceived 
 by the Spanish government. These mistakes were, 1st, sending round all 
 his artillery and cavalry, when we entered Spain, by a long march, thus 
 paralysing his exertions for a fortnight or three weeks ; 2d, making the 
 hazardous and indecisive advance from Salamanca to Sahagun, which led 
 him eventually to abandon the only true strategical plan of returning, as 
 he himself intended a week before, on the strong ground of Portugal. 
 Again, the detaching the Light Division to Vigo was an error which pre- 
 vented his occupying a strong position before Corunna ; and, lastly, his 
 forced night marches in order to escape from our enemy, who was re- 
 pelled by us at all points, even after our horrible losses and disasters, and 
 with two-thirds only of our army. 
 
 "It must be recollected that I only had the knowledge of a young 
 subaltern officer, and in resenting the stern general order of our chief, in 
 which he reflected on the want of discipline, I simply express what all the 
 poor sufferers felt who knew that the army so condemned was in an ad- 
 mirable state a month before. ' To whom therefore,' said we, ' is this 
 forlorn state due, but to the chief who commands us to do impossibi- 
 lities i.e., to march without shoes and provisions, and in dark winter 
 nights?' 
 
 " For these reasons, notwithstanding all the praise of his admirers, in- 
 cluding William Napier, who had been drilled under him, I have never 
 been able to regard Moore as a first-rate general. As a general of division, 
 as a disciplinarian, and as a noble type of unblemished character and un- 
 flinching courage, he was without a rival. Peace be to his ashes ! and let 
 glory be ever associated with the name of the hero who in Egypt contri- 
 buted so much to the success of Abercromby, and who, like his gallant 
 Scottish countryman, met his death in the arms of victory." 
 
is(K] WITH SIR JOHN MOORE IN SPAIN. 41 
 
 of some attempts to acquire a few words of Spanish. Such 
 phrases as were likely to be of service in the march are 
 carefully noted. He records how, having now been pro- 
 moted to be Lieutenant, he made his first essay in horse- 
 dealing, an unfortunate adventure, by which he secured an 
 animal whose legs, when seen by daylight, turned out to 
 have been all duly pitched below the knee, and whose most 
 sprightly movement consisted in rolling himself on the 
 ground, his feet in the air, and his rider sprawling in the 
 sand beside him, amid the laughter of the regiment. 
 
 From Abrantes to Castello de Vide he notes the broken 
 features of the ground, which rises into heights crowned here 
 and there with quaint old hill-forts, and sinks into fold after 
 fold of cork-forest, with plenteous harbourage for the hairless 
 black pig, " the best food in Portugal." Now and then during 
 the halts he and a companion would sally out for the inspec- 
 tion of castle, forest, village, or town, as might happen. At 
 the venerable fortress of Marvao, for example, scattering troops 
 of black swine, he climbed up to the fortifications of what 
 seemed to be a forgotten tenantless hold, when a challenge 
 suddenly came from a ragged sentinel in dingy brown, and 
 with a sorely rusted musket, dangerous only to the hands 
 that might venture to fire it. The strangers were reported 
 to the " Governor," and they found, as the whole garrison, a 
 score of men yet more patched than the sentinel, with hardly 
 a lock to any one of their guns. 
 
 The 36th regiment was the first of the division which 
 crossed the frontier into Spain. He chronicles in the be- 
 haviour of the natives a strong contrast to that of the Por- 
 tuguese. Though received with shouts of " Long live the 
 English ! Long live King George !" he found the people 
 
42 SIR RODERICK M URGE I SON. [ieos. 
 
 cold and distrustful; and he speaks of the disheartening 
 effect upon himself and comrades of the indifference and 
 reserve with which the houses on which they were billeted 
 were opened to them. 
 
 There was much in this march into the heart of Spain to 
 arrest the notice of an observant eye the forms of the 
 great table-land, with its sierras and river-gorges the 
 antique towns and mouldering ruins going back even into 
 Eoman times the ways and manners of the people. Of 
 these various features no jottings occur in the journal, save 
 only such scanty ones as to show that they were not passed 
 wholly without notice. At the Escurial the force halted for 
 six days. Many of the officers contrived during this interval 
 to see Madrid. Murchison, being somewhat unwell, spent the 
 time among the jolly brethren of the great gridiron convent. 
 What seems to have made the most lasting impression on 
 him were the large flasks of wine hung before the window 
 of every cell to ripen for private use. But he retained a 
 vivid recollection, too, of the splendours of the art collec- 
 tion, then still untouched by French spoliation, and of the 
 solemn resting-place of the Kings of Spain. 
 
 It was while waiting at the Escurial for tidings of 
 the Spanish forces, with which the British were to co- 
 operate, that General Hope learned how utterly these forces 
 had been routed and dispersed by the French, who, under 
 Napoleon in person, were now rapidly approaching the 
 capital. At once the route was changed, and by a skilful 
 move the British division under Hope was united to the 
 main body of the army led by Sir John Moore. In the 
 course of this rapid march there occurred at the old Moorish 
 city of Avila an incident, of which Murchison gives the 
 
1809. J THE RETREAT TO LUGO. 43 
 
 following account : " Our poor fellows being well tired 
 were either asleep or dozing against the walls of the houses, 
 when they were roused by a tramping of horses' feet and 
 loud clashing of metal, sounding just like a cavalry- charge, 
 which caused a few to run for their arms, piled in the middle 
 of the dark street, whilst many more made a sauve qui pent 
 into the adjacent alleys. The charge having cleared the 
 street, knocking down many a piled musket, our amuse- 
 ment was great to find that one old vicious mule, breaking 
 away from the muleteers, had carried with him a troop of 
 his associates, who came full gallop clattering down the 
 street, tossing our camp-kettles and all their burdens by the 
 way. This was the enemy's cavalry that awoke us !" 
 
 Hard winter weather and a continued retreat began to 
 tell upon the discipline and the numbers of the British 
 troops. On the 6th of January, on reaching Lugo, Sir John 
 Moore issued a general order, beginning, " Generals and 
 commanding officers of corps must be as sensible as the 
 Commander-in-Chief of the complete disorganization of the 
 army." Lieutenant Murchison, however, could see no signs 
 of any such disintegration in the 36th regiment at that time, 
 and it was only after the terrible night-marches which suc- 
 ceeded the halt at Lugo that his division merited in his eyes 
 the severe censure of the Commander-in-Chief. These toil- 
 some nights, with the constant pressure of the French, and 
 of even more resistless foes, bitter frost and snow, told, too, 
 upon his own strength. 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 
 
44 SIR RODERICK MURCHISON. [isoo. 
 
 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 Lugo, 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 Lugo. 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 fight- 
 ing, 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 road, 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 far 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. 
 
1809.] NEARLY TAKEN PRISONER 45 
 
 " 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 regi- 
 ment, and must be taken prisoner, a black- eyed drummer of 
 the 96th came by from the village, whither the young fellow 
 had been to cater. Seeing that I was exhausted, and almost 
 as young as himself, 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 pri- 
 soners, 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 
 with about fifty men only, with the colours, though ere night 
 it was made up to its strength of 600 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 Lugo 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 
 
46 SIR RODERICK MURCHISON. [ISOQ. 
 
 line Corimna 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 when on the 15th the French crossed the 
 last bridge we had blown up, and were defiling at a respect- 
 able 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 on 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. And 
 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, 42d, and 50th regi- 
 ments (Lord W. Bentinck's brigade), who rushed on with 
 the bayonet, and, supported by the Guards, held their own 
 against a terrific superiority, until General Paget was ordered 
 
1809.] THE BATTLE OF CORUNNA. 47 
 
 to move his brigade towards the enemy's flank, and com- 
 pelled 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 we're 
 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 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 im- 
 mediately 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 continua- 
 tion of the hilly track on which my division had marched a 
 few hours beforehand being certain that the French would 
 with the peep of day pass over our old bivouac to this pro- 
 montory, 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 what, the brave High- 
 landers are there ; they have not come away like you folks.' 
 
48 SIR RODERICK MURCHISON. [isog. 
 
 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 dis- 
 may 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 The retreat from 
 Lugo could not be more confused than this flight of ships. 
 On the night after our start I was awakened by a strange 
 noise, and running on deck found the ship wearing off 
 under a furious storm from amidst white foam and breakers. 
 We had just avoided going ashore upon the Dodman a 
 headland of Cornwall which that very night sent three or 
 four of our careless transports to the bottom with their crews, 
 and filled with poor soldiers who had escaped from the 
 dangers and privations of the campaign. Such were our 
 transports of the old war. We had been saved from this 
 disaster solely by the watchfulness of an old grenadier." 
 
1809.] GARRISON LIFE AT HOME. 49 
 
 So ended Murchison's first and last campaign. After the 
 lapse of more than half a century spent in peaceful and utterly 
 different pursuits, and when men had ceased to think of him 
 as having tried in any degree the rough ways of war, he 
 loved to recall those old Peninsular days. Many a time did 
 the recollection of them furnish him with a telling point in 
 an after- dinner speech, and give to some of his hearers a 
 surprise when they learnt that the speaker whom they had 
 known or heard of, perhaps from boyhood, only as a man of 
 science, had fought with Wellesley and Moore before the 
 year of Waterloo. 
 
 From the end of January 1809 to nearly the end of 
 October in the same year, Murchison remained with his 
 regiment on home service, continuing to vary the routine 
 of garrison life by visits to different parts of the country, 
 among others to Tarradale, the paternal estate in Eoss-shire. 
 London, too, lay so temptingly near to Horsham Barracks, 
 that he was often to be found with some of his messmates at 
 the Old Slaughter's Coffee-house, St. Martin's Lane, then a 
 favourite military haunt. On one of these occasions, escorted 
 by his commanding officer, Colonel Burne, he was parading 
 Bond Street in the stream of fashionable loungers when Sir 
 Arthur Wellesley came up. The hero of Vimieira had for 
 the nonce turned his sword into the pen of the Chief 
 Secretary for Ireland, and his military uniform into a civilian's 
 garb so unique that it remained ever after in the young 
 lieutenant's memory : " Coat double-breasted, with brass 
 buttons, buff waistcoat, kerseymere shorts, and brown top- 
 boots, leaving a good deal of daylight behind." Eecognising 
 the Colonel, he stopped. His words not less than his dress 
 made one of the reminiscences which Murchison liked most 
 
 VOL. I. D 
 
50 SIR RODERICK MURCHISON. [isog. 
 
 to recall. " Ah, my dear Burne," said he, " glad to see you 
 once more. One of your younkers eh ? Well, things won't 
 do as they are. I shall soon be at it again, and then I can't 
 do without the 36th." But though this prophecy came true 
 enough, and though doubtless the subaltern went away re- 
 joicing in the prospect of again having a chance of distin- 
 guishing himself, he was not destined to take any part with 
 his regiment in the brilliant adventures which ended with 
 Waterloo. 
 
 Curiously enough, the very advancement which he had all 
 along contemplated as the height of military bliss became 
 in the end the ruin of his professional prospects. He now 
 attained his ambition, for in the autumn of 1809 he became 
 aide-de-camp to his uncle. But the change, though it led 
 him abroad, brought him no opportunity of advancing him- 
 self in his career. 
 
 General Mackenzie was then in Sicily, and his nephew 
 had orders to join him there. On the 25th of October, 
 George m.'s jubilee, he set sail. As the ' Salcette ' frigate, 
 in which he had obtained a berth, slipped round the North 
 Foreland and down the Channel, the shores of Kent 
 from headland to headland, and from tower to tower, 
 blazed with cannon, while a great fleet fronting the coast-line 
 answered with one long flame of fire from ship to ship, as if 
 to show not merely loyalty to the old King, but a front of 
 defiance to be seen and understood by Napoleon on the 
 other side of the strait. 
 
 Life abroad wore now a pleasanter aspect than it had done 
 for him in the Peninsula. " At Messina," he says, " I was 
 soon set up as my uncle's aide-de-camp in a house of my 
 own, with two horses, and little to do except make love and 
 
1809.] GARRISON LIFE IN SICILY. 51 
 
 ride in the cool of the evening with my general." As one 
 of his duties he had to copy an official correspondence be- 
 tween his uncle and the agents of the Neapolitan Govern- 
 ment, and thereby had an early opportunity of learning some- 
 thing of the duplicity and broken faith with which the 
 British in Sicily had to deal. Another correspondence also 
 copied out by him was one with Admiral Collingwood, then 
 in command of the Mediterranean squadron, whose de- 
 spatches were pointed out to him by his uncle as 
 models for imitation. 
 
 A lull had come in the warlike operations in Italy. The 
 hostile forces, looking at each other across the narrow Strait 
 of Messina, contented themselves with a wearisome and 
 profitless gun-boat bombardment. Murat came down into 
 Calabria, and threats were given out that he would invade 
 Sicily and call on the people to rise against the hated 
 Bourbon ; but as no such move was made, the bombardment 
 went on. 
 
 This uninteresting duel was once enlivened by an inci- 
 dent worthy of an older time. A flag of truce came sailing 
 across from the French lines, and keen grew the interest on 
 the Sicilian side to learn what new turn affairs had taken. 
 Still greater, however, was the astonishment of everybody 
 when the French officer, disembarking with a package under 
 his arm, made known his mission thus : " Le Eoi mon 
 maltre ayant appris que son bon ami le General Mackenzie 
 se trouve en face, desire renouveler leur amitie', et lui envoye 
 quelques livres de bon tabac de Paris !" 
 
 It turned out that some years before, Mackenzie had 
 obtained leave of absence to go from Minorca to visit Eome. 
 While he was in the imperial city, the French army under 
 
52 SIR RODERICK MURCHISON. [isog. 
 
 Murat suddenly appeared. The young British brigadier re- 
 solved not to flee, like most of his fellow-countrymen, but 
 to trust to the effects of a bold bearing upon the generous 
 and susceptible mind of Murat. On the evening of the 
 French entry into Eome, a Princess, with whom Mackenzie 
 was acquainted, gave a grand ball, at which he was an- 
 nounced in full uniform as " The English General" Taking 
 no notice of the French officers, who looked at each other 
 in astonishment, he saluted the hostess, and had entered into 
 conversation with her, when at last Murat, recovering from 
 his surprise, tapped him on the shoulder, and begged for 
 some explanation. Mackenzie easily satisfied him that he 
 was what he pretended to be, a young British officer, "fond 
 of pictures, pretty women, and amusement ; and that as he 
 was simply amusing himself and learning Italian, he thought 
 he had better trust to the generosity of a brave General-in- 
 Chief than be captured by troops and treated as a spy." 
 Murat not only granted him leave to stay in Eome, but 
 gave him a passport to travel where he pleased, and formed 
 a friendship which was now renewed even in the midst of 
 actual war. 
 
 As a further reminiscence of this friendship, his nephew 
 writes, " When the General [Mackenzie] visited Paris at 
 the peace of Amiens, he found in Murat a most useful and 
 kind friend, who presented him to the First Consul, with 
 whom he dined. It was my uncle's habit to eat slowly, 
 and in short to dine like a gentleman, in conversing with 
 his neighbours. Massena, who was next him, said, 
 ' Depechez-vous, mon Ge'ne'ral le diner sera bientot fini et 
 vous n'aurez rien a manger/ Such was Bonaparte's rapid 
 and voracious mode of feeding (no wonder he died of a 
 
1809.] GARRISON LIFE IN SICILY. 53 
 
 cancer in his stomach !), that before my worthy uncle had 
 eaten the second dish, Napoleon was trotting by him, fol- 
 lowed by all his clattering suite, to have coffee in the next 
 room of the Tuileries." 
 
 Although actual warfare was going on within sight of 
 Messina, our young aide-de-camp began again to complain 
 of monotony. He took pains to acquire some knowledge of 
 Italian, and, what may surprise those who knew him only 
 late in life, had lessons in singing. Of professional work 
 there would seem to have been but little for him to do ; 
 hence the arrival of a stranger, who needed to be taken 
 round the outskirts of Messina, was no doubt a welcome 
 excitement. His journals contain jottings of such short 
 excursions, parties, and other gossip. The only incident 
 beyond the usual routine relates to an English lady, one of 
 the beauties of the place, who, however, had the misfortune 
 to be extremely stout : " One day at the table of the Com- 
 mander -in -Chief, the captain of a Turkish frigate being 
 seated opposite to F , was so lost in admiration of her 
 that D and myself, who were sitting on either side of 
 him, asked him how much he would pay for her, and he 
 instantly replied, with sparkling eyes, ' Fifty brass cannon/ 
 in other words, his frigate's worth." 
 
 General Mackenzie's health now required his return to 
 England, and our aide-de-camp was soon relegated once 
 more to home life. The journey homeward proved more 
 circuitous and prolonged, as well as somewhat more event- 
 ful, than the voyage out had been. They had berths on 
 board a " miserable little packet, with some six pop-guns," 
 and their route lay by Malta and Cagliari to Gibraltar. Off 
 the coast of Sicily they ran a narrow chance of being sunk 
 
54 SIR RODERICK MURCHISON. \im. 
 
 by an Algerine squadron, the Algerines being then at war 
 with the Sicilians. At Cagliari they beheld his Sardinian 
 Majesty drawn down one of the steep streets of the place in a 
 rickety coach by four black long-tailed horses. Ten days 
 passed pleasantly away at Gibraltar, enlivened by an excursion 
 into the hills of Eonda, in the wake of the retreating French, 
 with the risk of being taken prisoners by them, or of being 
 shot as Frenchmen by the guerillas. At Cadiz he made 
 fresh acquaintances, witnessed a little further warfare in the 
 attack and defence of Fort Matagorda, and enjoyed for a fort- 
 night the evening stroll on the Alameda. The packet direct 
 from Constantinople to England took him finally home. 
 
CHAPTEE IV. 
 
 MILITARY LIFE AT HOME. 
 
 THE military career of Lieutenant Murchison had now 
 come wholly to depend for its shaping upon that of Lieut- 
 General Mackenzie. As the latter on his return home was 
 appointed to command in the north of Ireland, his prospects 
 of future advancement suffered hopeless ruin, and with them 
 went those of his young aide-de-camp. Both aspirants for 
 distinction were doomed to inaction at home just as Wel- 
 lington was beginning his brilliant successes in the Penin- 
 sula, and they remained here through those eventful years 
 1811 to 1814 during which the British army established 
 its prestige on the continent of Europe. 
 
 With this forced inaction Murchison used to connect an 
 incident illustrative of one phase of the society of England 
 at the time. General Mackenzie had been a favourite with the 
 Prince Eegent, and continued to be so until one fatal night 
 after his return from Sicily. The story is thus told by his 
 nephew : " My uncle was in the pit of the Opera when Sir 
 A. Murray, the gentleman-usher of the Princess of Wales, 
 came down to him from her box and conveyed the flattering 
 
56 SIR RODERICK MURCHISON. [mi. 
 
 message that her Eoyal Highness wished to see him. Hesi- 
 tating for a moment, for he well knew how the Prince hated 
 her, he unfortunately assented, in the belief that no one 
 could refuse a royal command. Of course, the Princess 
 having got one of the Prince's clique, and a handsome 
 fellow, in hand, made the most of her conquest, not only by 
 parading him in front of the box, but also by taking him 
 home to sup with her. The late Lord Hertford, who was 
 the constant gossip of the Prince, went at the usual hour 
 next morning, and whilst H. E. H. was shaving said, 
 'Well, Sir, strange things come to pass. Mac was 
 with the Princess in her box last night, and went home 
 with her to supper.' The razor fell from the royal hand, 
 and at once he took a dislike to my uncle, who never saw 
 him afterwards. But to soften his fall the Grand Cross of 
 the Hanoverian Order was sent to him, the Prince saying, 
 ' Mac is a handsome fellow, and will look well in it.' " 
 
 On his return from Messina, Murchison had again to 
 betake himself to dull barrack-duty at Horsham with the 
 second battalion of the 36th regiment, to which he belonged. 
 He had not yet discovered any form of mental occupation 
 which might serve to make even that monotonous sort of 
 life not unprofitable. On his own confession, he gave him- 
 self up to walking feats, lessons in pugilism, horses, and the 
 other pursuits with which a young military dandy contrives 
 to fill up his time. In the midst of this aimless life he 
 gladly obeyed a summons from his uncle to join him as 
 aide-de-camp in the north of Ireland, where the General 
 had been appointed to the command of a division. 
 
 Everything at first promised well in this new sphere of 
 action. But when he had fairly settled down in his quarters 
 
i8ii.] GARRISON LIFE IN IRELAND. 57 
 
 in the town of Armagh, the aide-de-camp found them even 
 more intolerably dull than Horsham, with a vastly greater 
 distance from anything like the pleasures of society. His 
 companion at this time, the Comte de Clermont, a young 
 French emigre, holding the rank of captain in our service, 
 had been appointed by General Mackenzie to be aide- 
 de-camp with Murchison. With every disposition to be 
 amused, the two young men found it no easy task to keep 
 themselves in good humour in Armagh. Having no kind 
 of military duty to perform, they spent their mornings in 
 hare-hunting with slow beagles. During the day they were 
 often to be found at a neighbouring rectory, drawn partly 
 by the whimsicality of the jolly parson, and partly by the 
 charms of his young ladies, among whom each of them con- 
 trived to fall deeply in love. From the rector's humour and 
 Miss B 's attractions the change to the dull lonely evenings 
 at Armagh was no doubt intolerable. Now and then a tea- 
 party came off in their honour. When that form of excite- 
 ment failed they had the chance of a game at tric-trac with 
 the General, who however would dismiss them at nine 
 o'clock to their lodging over a bootmaker's shop. 1 
 
 In his journal of this period there occur allusions to the 
 Cathedral Library, but he appears to have made little use of 
 it, his chief mental exertions having been given to the dis- 
 cipline of his stable and the doctoring of his horses. Such 
 reading as he accomplished seems to have consisted of 
 
 1 An amusing glimpse into this Armagh life is furnished by the 
 remark of a French cook whom the General had taken over to Ireland 
 with him, and whose disgust with the want of resources for his art, and 
 the intolerably pungent peat-smoke, found vent at last in the following 
 words, duly chronicled by the nephew : " C'est avec infiniment de regret, 
 M. le G6n6ral, que je voxis quitte : mais en v6rite si je reste ici je perdrai 
 et ma reputation et ma vue." 
 
58 SIR RODERICK MURCHISON. [mi. 
 
 Shakespeare and any sensational form of literature which 
 came to hand. 
 
 At this time of his life Murchison was simply one of 
 those numerous young men who, finding in the routine of 
 their military duty occupation for but a small portion of the 
 day, and having little inclination for pursuits requiring any 
 degree of thought, yet happy in the possession of excellent 
 health, strong bodies, and good spirits, need to get an outlet 
 somehow for their superfluous energy. Nor does he seem 
 to have been more fastidious than others in his choice as to 
 the direction in which that outlet was to be sought feats 
 of pedestrianism, hunting, or horsemanship offered a ready 
 relief from the tedium of military idleness. 
 
 Now and again he obtained leave to go to England, and 
 on these occasions, when not following the hounds in the 
 northern counties, he was usually to be seen dressed in the 
 height of fashion and airing himself on the promenades of 
 London. For he had now managed to pick up expensive 
 tastes, and indulged in an extravagance which brought him 
 a series of earnest expostulations both from his guardian and 
 his uncle. On his own confession he spent treble and 
 quadruple his allowance, and looked forward to his majority 
 as an event which would enable him to gratify even more 
 freely his fondness for display. He even talked of selling 
 the patrimony in Eoss- shire so soon as it came into his pos- 
 session a purpose which his guardian contemplated with 
 horror as a frustration of the design of Dr. Murchison, who 
 had purchased the property as an investment for the family, 
 and who held that a small freehold estate gives a man a 
 better position in the country than treble its value in the 
 bank. Murchison of Tarradale would have a voice in his 
 county, Murchison of the funds could have none. 
 
1812.] COMING OF AGE. 59 
 
 In the midst of this purposeless extravagance it is plea- 
 sant to find a glimpse of better things. On the 27th of 
 January 1812, Captain Murchison became a Member of the 
 Royal Institution, where he attended the lectures of Sir 
 Humphry Davy. No notice of this part of his London 
 doings, however, occurs in his journals. 
 
 At last the long-wished-for 19th February 1813 arrived, 
 and the young laird came of age. His guardian had urged 
 him to go north, see the property with his mature eyes, 
 and judge for himself whether he would act wisely in parting 
 with it. He now resolved to follow this advice. In those 
 days it was common to make the journey into Scotland on 
 horseback, or to post in one's carriage. Young Tarradale 
 combined the two kinds of locomotion, for he converted 
 his tall hunter " Buckran " into a buggy horse, and with his 
 groom " started off steadily in his high green dog-cart." 
 After a short stay in Edinburgh he took the old Highland 
 road, and had reached Blair- Athol by the last day in March. 
 Next morning a loud thumping at his bedroom door, and 
 the voice of his Yorkshire groom " Sir, I canna get in to 
 Buckran ; the snaw 's blocked oop t' way to steable," brought 
 before him in a way not to be forgotten one of the risks of 
 Highland travelling in the old days. Half a century after- 
 wards he was again driving with the writer of these lines 
 along the same road, and recalled the picture of his escape 
 how after incredible labours, and with a strong gillie or two at 
 each wheel, he managed to reach the little wayside inn of 
 Dalnacardoch ; how the stage-coach, trying to follow them 
 late in the day, was capsized over the bank of the Garry, 
 and the driver, guard, and passengers, after trudging for some 
 miles through the snow, arrived with nightfall at his inn ; 
 
60 SIR RODERICK MURCHISON. [isis. 
 
 how next day, leaving Buckran and the groom snowed up at 
 Dalnacardoch, and taking only a small supply of raiment 
 with him, he and the other passengers toiled from breakfast- 
 tinie to sunset through that most formidable of the Highland 
 passes the defile of Drumouchter ; how one of the 
 pedestrians, a sturdy sheep-farmer, would sometimes come 
 to the help of two young school-girls who were of the party, 
 lifting one in each arm through the heaviest drifts as if they 
 had been a couple of sheep ; how, after reaching and resting 
 at Dalwhinnie, they made their way finally to Inverness on 
 a snow-carriage ; and how Buckran and the dog-cart did 
 not turn up for nearly a fortnight after. 
 
 Inverness now became for a short while his headquarters. 
 There, as he writes, he had " long proses " with the Provost 
 of the town, who was factor for the Tarradale estate. He 
 went over the property, and "tasted" its soil with worthy 
 Provost Brown of Elgin, who pronounced it to be " good and 
 sharp." Like other Highland estates of the day, the land 
 was miserably farmed. We can picture the young laird, 
 mounted on Buckran, and riding among the wretched hovels 
 of his crofters. Little about the place itself, save that it 
 was his own birthplace and his father's choice, offered any 
 opposition to the design he had half-formed of selling the 
 estate. In his journal the following passage occurs : " When 
 the whole of the poor little tenants came round me and said 
 they would willingly pay any rent which their interpreter 
 into English, Eory M'Lennan, said ' so just a man as 
 the Provost would award,' I could not find it in my heart 
 to turn them adrift, though I knew them to be wretchedly 
 bad farmers, who hitherto had only paid their rents through 
 illicit distillation of whisky." Whether it was prompted by 
 
IBIS.] TARRADALE RENTS. 61 
 
 mere good-nature or by youthful impatience, this hasty 
 letting of the estate in the old way to poor crofters proved 
 in the end to be as bad a piece of policy as the young laird's 
 uncle, General Mackenzie, declared it to be when he heard 
 what had been done. In a few years the rents got more and 
 more into arrears, until the estate was gladly sold off. 
 
 Near to Tarradale lay the lands of Ferrintosh, the property 
 of Forbes of Culloden, to whom and his heirs, in considera- 
 tion of services rendered and losses sustained at the time of 
 the Revolution, had been granted the perpetual right of 
 making and selling whisky at Ferrintosh, duty free. The 
 temptation offered by such a traffic was too great to be resisted 
 by the tenantry of the other estates in the neighbourhood, 
 who readily found a sale in Ferrintosh for the whisky they 
 had privately distilled in their cabins or in lonely hollows of 
 the moors. As a consequence of such extensive evasions of 
 the Customs, it became at last necessary to abolish the 
 privileges granted to Ferrintosh, the sum of 21,500 being 
 voted by Parliament in 1784 by way of compensation. But 
 no Act of Parliament could readily change habits which 
 entered so largely into the life of the peasantry of that far 
 Eoss-shire region. And so the young laird of Tarradale had 
 to wink at the distillation, and pocket his rents, or at least 
 such proportion of them as he could secure. 
 
 Two Parliamentary elections occurred while he was at 
 Inverness, one of them for his own county of Ross-shire, 
 in which he took part on the side of the Tory candidate. He 
 notes that at one of the election dinners he had the old chief 
 of Glengarry opposite to him. " I saw," he writes, " that he 
 several times fixed me with his fierce grey eyes and bushy 
 eyebrows, and when the dinner was a little advanced, he put 
 
62 SIR RODERICK MURCHISON. [ISM. 
 
 his hand across the table, and leaning over said loudly to 
 me, ' Ye 're welcome, sir, to the land of your fathers ; may 
 you never desert nor forget it,' giving me a Highland grip 
 I can never forget." 
 
 We may believe that a relative of Donald Murchison 
 would not fail to receive a hearty welcome. Most of his 
 time, indeed, during this visit to his native district, seems 
 to have been passed in the enjoyment of the hospitalities 
 of his friends and acquaintances fishing, shooting, and 
 hunting, and abundant festivity. 
 
 While amid such desultory employments and amusements 
 time had been creeping onward with Murchison in Ireland, 
 in London or elsewhere in England, and now in Scotland, 
 events of world-wide importance had been shaping them- 
 selves in the Peninsula. Step by step Wellington had 
 driven the French armies out of that part of Europe ; 
 Napoleon's prestige had fallen, and at last came his abdi- 
 cation and retreat to Elba. Our young military aspirant 
 says of himself that he was " for ever bewailing his fate at 
 not being at his real work in the Peninsula." The cam- 
 paign, however, had ended without his ever having had a 
 call into active service, and now on the peace of 1814 he 
 saw the final blow to all his hopes of military fame. As 
 his uncle threw up his Staff appointment, he himself 
 became a captain of the 36th on half-pay, his battalion 
 having been promptly reduced. London became again his 
 headquarters. 
 
 Of this part of his life the following notice occurs in his 
 journal : " In 1814 I was in London, living gaily at Long's 
 hotel with a set of young dandies, dining now and then with 
 Alexander Woodford of the Guards, at St. James's Palace, 
 
1814.] LONDON IN 1814. 63 
 
 when the announcement of the arrival of the foreign 
 Sovereigns (Eussia and Prussia) set all the metropolis in a 
 ferment. I galloped out with many others to Shooter's Hill 
 to see the Emperor Alexander in his little droschke, with 
 his bearded Euss on the box, and certes, though there was 
 no state reception, he was heartily cheered, escorted by a 
 joyous cavalcade of well-mounted English gentlemen. 
 
 "It being announced that the Eegent would visit the 
 Opera accompanied by his imperial and royal guests, every 
 cranny was bespoke, and I got a good central post in the 
 pit ; for in those days there were no stalls (and no shopboys 
 and tradesmen ever went to the pit then). The reception of 
 their Majesties was of course most enthusiastic. They were 
 really welcomed as our liberators from Gallic tyranny. 
 
 " Suddenly there arose a sort of semi-applause, followed 
 by murmurs, with some disturbance. It was the Princess of 
 Wales, who had just entered a box directly facing that of 
 the Eegent, and, as if she came to defy him and try her own 
 strength, she came forward in her hat and feathers to show 
 herself. A few cries were got up for her, amidst loud mur- 
 muring at this unseemly attempt to disturb unanimity on 
 such an occasion. 
 
 " Then it was that the Eegent, on whose countenance I 
 had my eye fixed, rose, and taking the Emperor and King 
 on his right and left hands, advanced gracefully to the front 
 of the royal box, the three personages bowing three times to 
 the audience. The appeal was electric : the roar of applause 
 lasted for minutes, and the Princess was so discomfited that 
 she no more showed in the front of her box during the 
 evening, and retired soon to her petit souper and her 
 clique." 
 
64 SIR RODERICK MURCHISON. [ISM. 
 
 In the crowd of English travellers who eagerly availed 
 themselves of the reopening of the Continent, Murchison 
 found his way to Paris in the beginning of November 1814. 
 He remained there for some weeks, which he employed with 
 the most laudable assiduity in trying to make himself as 
 French as he could. He dined and spent much of his time 
 in a pension where no English was spoken, took lessons in 
 dancing from one of the leading teachers, frequented the 
 theatres, passed many an hour over the pictures in the 
 Louvre (for he was now beginning to aspire to be a connois- 
 seur in art), was presented at Court, and in company with 
 his old friend and fellow-aide-de-camp De Clermont, who 
 had returned to Paris with the Eestoration, saw everybody 
 and everything which had any interest for " a young man 
 about town." There occur among his memoranda notices of 
 the actors and the acting at some of the theatres. " I could 
 not," he says, " quite get over the solemnity and monotony 
 of the French rhythm at the Theatre Francois, where I went, 
 book in hand, to hear Talma in Corneille's ' Cinna,' supported, 
 as he was, by Madlle. de Eancour and by Georges. It was 
 gratifying, however, to see how he first broke the sing-song 
 by his imitation of Kemble and the English style by ejacu- 
 lations and stops in the middle of some of the long lines of 
 Racine. 
 
 " The best actor of high comedy I ever saw was Fleury. 
 Having been taught before the Eevolution, he was every inch 
 a gentleman, and his countrymen of good taste said despond- 
 ingly of him, ' C'est le dernier des FranQais qui sait porter 
 I'e'pe'e.' When I saw how vulgarly most of the other actors 
 of the revolutionary breed dressed and acted, carrying their 
 swords like butchers' knives, I felt the truth of the aphorism." 
 
1814-15.] IN FRA NCE IN 1 8 1 4- 1 5. 65 
 
 His mother was then living at Tours, and Murchison paid 
 her a visit there. His chief companion there seems to have 
 been Francis Hare (elder brother of Augustus and Julius), 
 whose versatility and dash captivated him, and with whom he 
 made excursions. Among other places, they visited together 
 Poitiers, where Hare introduced him to Walter Savage Landor, 
 then resident at that place. " Landor lived at the summit of 
 a large central tower, which overlooked the whole city, and 
 there we found the impetuous but warm-hearted philosopher 
 ensconced in a library filled with all the most curious old 
 French works, Rabelais being his special favourite. He and 
 Hare held a disputation on Louis the Eleventh and his 
 doings, as we looked down upon the remnants of the palace 
 of that craftiest of all the French kings." 
 
 In such pursuits the last weeks of 1814 and the first two 
 months of the following year passed away, until at the begin- 
 ning of March he found himself again in Paris on his home- 
 ward journey. The morning after his arrival, his Swiss 
 servant roused him with the momentous tidings, " Napoleon 
 has landed in France !" The following narrative of this part of 
 his experience is given by himself : " To jump up, hurry 
 on my clothes, rush out to the Cafe", already full of anxious 
 and inquiring faces, was my first movement ; then to read 
 the morning papers, most of them trying to make light of 
 the affair, and saying it would be all soon put down. Next 
 came reports that he had capitulated ; then that he was ad- 
 vancing to Grenoble. Eight and left the English now were 
 eyed iniinically in the streets, low and vulgar officers elbowed 
 you, and things became mightily unpleasant in the course 
 of that day. On the following day, when more news had 
 arrived, hopes were up, the garrison at Grenoble had re- 
 
 VOL. I. E 
 
66 SIR RODERICK MURCHISON. [WM-IB. 
 
 sisted, and Napoleon's cause was lost ; then a camp was to 
 be formed at Melun, and the Due de Berri was to command 
 it ; the Marechal Ney having sworn fidelity to Louis xvin. 
 This last, which was true, seemed the best chance, for Key 
 was beloved by the soldiers. Then followed a review of all 
 the royal guards and regiments in Paris, 10,000 or 12,000 
 men, in the Carrousel in front of the balcony of the Tuileries, 
 in which the fat old Louis waddled out in his velvet boots to 
 be saluted by the loyal troops. 
 
 "I attended on that occasion, and never saw such a 
 farce. The soldiers of the line surrounding the National 
 Guards were all cracking jokes with each other ; and though 
 they still wore the white cockade, they were evidently all 
 dying to mount the tricolor." 
 
 He went to see his friend at Court, the young Comte de 
 Clermont, and found him fully aware of the fact that the 
 army would not stand by the King, and that resistance was 
 therefore hopeless. Evidently Paris was no longer a desir- 
 able domicile for an English officer. De Clermont advised 
 him to leave at once. The English visitors were already in 
 rapid flight thronging the usual road to Calais, and hiring 
 every available conveyance that would take them to the 
 coast. Captain Murchison rightly conjectured that by mak- 
 ing a detour by way of Be"thune and St. Omer, he would 
 have some chance of securing post-horses, and reaching 
 Calais. Not without some risk, however, could English 
 travellers make their way along the roads of France at that 
 time. Coming out of Be"thune he met the head of an in- 
 fantry regiment, which, from the narrowness of the roadway, 
 had to pass the carriage in single file. " ' Que sont ces 
 Messieurs,' they cried out ; ' Ce sont des d'Anglais. 
 
1814-15.] BECOMES CAPTAIN OF DRAGOONS. 67 
 
 Aliens, renversez les a la baionette.' Drunken as they 
 were, and all in the greatest excitement, they had raised the 
 wheels, and were actually about to trundle us over into the 
 ditch of the fortress, and were unharnessing the horses, just 
 as the adjutant rode up and applied a thick cane to their 
 shoulders, and rescued us. We afterwards met with others 
 of these soldiers in detached parties, and in complete dis- 
 order, but we kept close shut up in our machine. At Arras 
 the captain of the guard sulkily let us pass the gates after 
 looking at our passports, saying, ' Et bien, je n'ai pas encore 
 reQU des ordres.' " 
 
 The war-clouds having once more spread over Europe, 
 there seemed now again some hope of obtaining active mili- 
 tary service, and gaining coveted promotion. So the half- 
 pay captain of infantry determined at once to enter one of 
 the cavalry regiments which were to take part in the im- 
 pending Belgian campaign. In doing so, however, he acted 
 without the advice and indeed against the wishes of his 
 uncle, General Mackenzie, who, vexed at this want of con- 
 fidence, wrote to his mother that he considered the entering 
 into the cavalry as a " measure full of the most stupid folly." 
 Notwithstanding this protest, the exchange was made. Mur- 
 chison joined the Enniskillen Dragoons, and seems now to 
 have looked forward with tolerable confidence to a chance 
 of distinguishing himself. But even though he had the 
 promise of employment from the Colonel, who was his per- 
 sonal friend, he was once more fated to disappointment, and 
 the predictions of his uncle proved too true. Six troops only 
 were ordered out, and every one of the service captains in- 
 sisting on going ; he had no alternative but to equip himself 
 with uniform and horses, and repair to the depot at Ipswich. 
 
68 SIR RODERICK MUROHISON. [1315. 
 
 Events crowded rapidly upon each other during the 
 hundred days, Ligny, Quatre Bras, and, lastly, Waterloo. 
 Then fell Murchison's hopes of an active military career. 
 The war was at an end. Europe had now been so worn out 
 with fighting that no new campaign was likely to take 
 shape for many a long year to come ; and, in the meanwhile, 
 he had no brighter prospect than the ennui of half-pay. 
 
 He was now, however, nearing the event which, in the 
 end, proved the turning-point of his career. His mother, 
 like other English residents in France, had deemed it pru- 
 dent to quit that country after Napoleon's return, and had 
 settled for a little at Eyde, in the Isle of Wight. Thither 
 her son went to visit her, and there, through the introduc- 
 tion of Miss Maria Porter, he made the acquaintance of 
 General and Mrs. Hugonin of Nursted House, Hampshire, 
 and their daughter Charlotte. This young lady was, to use 
 his own words, " attractive, piquante, clever, highly edu- 
 cated, and about three years my senior." He first met her 
 early in the summer of 1815, and, on the 29th of the 
 following August, in the romantic little church of Buriton, 
 in Hampshire, they were married. 
 
 Want of success in the military life had disposed Cap- 
 tain Murchison to look on that career with less enthusiastic 
 feelings than those of earlier years. He had even gone so 
 far as to think of retiring from the army ; and now this 
 half-formed intention received a stimulus from two sources. 
 His wife, herself the daughter of a soldier, had experienced 
 some of the discomforts of a soldier's life, and discerning in 
 her husband qualities of a higher kind than would be likely 
 to be called out by the routine of barrack-duty, seconded 
 his own inclinations. But perhaps the more immediate 
 
1815.] RETIRES FROM THE ARMY. 69 
 
 cause of his final determination was an order to join his 
 regiment at Eomford barracks. To take his bride there, 
 that she might share the dulness with which his experience 
 at Horsham and Armagh had made him only too familiar, was 
 a most distasteful prospect ; so at last he made up his mind 
 and sent in his resignation. His commanding officer re- 
 monstrated with him, but in vain. He stuck to his purpose. 
 After eight years' service he finally retired from the army 
 and gave up all those visions of military glory which filled 
 his whole soul in the old Marlow days. 
 
 It is evident that, up to this period of his life, Murchison 
 had not in any way given promise of future distinction. He 
 would have been noted as merely one of the gentlemanly, 
 intelligent, but by no means brilliant young officers, so 
 plentiful in the British army. To one who judged him 
 merely by externals, he would undoubtedly have seemed 
 little else than a military fop, and he used in later years to 
 confess that such an estimate would have been tolerably 
 true. The circumstances which were to call out his special 
 qualities of excellence had not yet arisen. Full of health 
 and bodily activity, he had from the beginning looked on 
 the military profession rather as an outlet for that part of 
 his nature than as a career requiring any special mental 
 training. In those days, indeed, professional study was not 
 much in fashion in the army. After quitting Marlow he 
 does not appear to have given himself in any degree to 
 acquiring further knowledge of the principles of the art of 
 war. In his journals there can be found no trace of pro- 
 fessional study, nor indeed of solid reading of any kind. 
 His leisure, which must often have hung heavily on his 
 hands, was spent, as we have seen, in active field-sports, in 
 
70 SIR RODERICK MURCHISON. [isis. 
 
 feats of bodily exercise, or in gratifying that love of display 
 which led him into culpable extravagance ; so that when he 
 quitted the army, there was little to look back upon with 
 unmingled satisfaction in that introductory part of his career. 
 He had entered the service with high hopes of distinction, 
 but by a series of unfortunate circumstances, and through no 
 fault of his own, he had been grievously disappointed. The 
 war had now come to an end, and with it went his visions 
 of rising to distinction in a campaign. He had not qualified 
 himself for distinction in any other way, and we can well 
 imagine how he should have turned aside at last almost 
 with repugnance from a career which at the beginning 
 seemed to promise all that he most desired. 
 
 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, leading 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. 
 
 The wedding over, Murchison took his bride north to 
 show her the Scottish Highlands, and to visit his friends 
 and relatives there. Of course he did not fail to lead her 
 over the paternal acres of Tarradale, and show her some of 
 the scenes where his ancestors had distinguished themselves. 
 Among other houses they visited that of an old lady, a 
 grand-aunt of his, who had intended leaving her estate to 
 him or his brother Kenneth, but unfortunately for him, as 
 she confided to his young wife, " he had too much of the 
 Baillies about him," his grandmother having been a Baillie ; 
 
1815.] PROPOSES TO ENTER THE CHURCH. 71 
 
 and so the estate, which would have "been a welcome addi- 
 tion to the badly paid rents of Tarradale, passed into other 
 hands. Late in October, and in a storm of snow, they 
 migrated southwards again. 
 
 Having given up one fixed employment the retired cap- 
 tain of dragoons began to look about for another. It will 
 hardly be believed by those who only knew him in his later 
 years that he now seriously thought of becoming a clergy- 
 man. In this proposal, as in his choice of a military pro- 
 fession, it seems to have been mainly his love of bodily 
 activity and open-air exercise which swayed him. He says 
 of himself, " I saw that my wife had been brought up to 
 look after the poor, was a good botanist, enjoyed a garden 
 and liked tranquillity ; and as parsons then enjoyed a little 
 hunting, shooting, and fishing without being railed at, I thought 
 that I might slide into that sort of comfortable domestic 
 life." Among the letters which he preserved there occurs 
 one from a friend whom he had asked to make inquiries for 
 him, and who went into the question in the most earnest 
 and business-like manner. This correspondent urges the 
 necessity of getting a Greek Lexicon, and suggests the 
 name of a clergyman who might be of service in helping the 
 aspirant for holy orders to read the Greek Testament. So 
 earnest is he about the Lexicon and other heavy tomes, that 
 he insists upon Murchison's having them conveyed separately 
 if he could find no room for them in the carriage with 
 which he proposed to make a journey to Switzerland. 1 
 
 1 The gravity with which the question was viewed may be gathered 
 from one or two sentences taken from this letter : " In consequence of 
 the peace we may expect an irruption of officers into the Church, which 
 may produce an additional strictness of regulation. I am not aware in 
 what time a degree may be taken at Cambridge ; any Cambridge man 
 
72 SIR RODERICK MURCHISON. [isis. 
 
 Fortunately for himself' and his possible parishioners this 
 notion soon died away. But while still undecided about enter- 
 ing the Church he resolved in the meantime to see a little of 
 the world with his wife. The winter was accordingly passed 
 at Nursted House, in diligent preparation for a long and 
 leisurely tour on the Continent. He had already attained 
 considerable proficiency in French. As the tour was to be 
 extended into Italy, he now set diligently to work to acquire 
 further knowledge of Italian, and to read a quantity of litera- 
 ture treating of the scenery and history of Italy. Probably 
 this was the most industrious winter he had yet spent ; for 
 he had now a definite incentive to work, besides the example 
 and co-operation of his wife. A day now and then with the 
 Hambledon fox-hounds, or old Tom Barham's beagles at 
 Petersfield, or with his gun and his father-in-law at home, 
 kept him from suffering from such an unwonted application 
 to books. 
 
 would tell you. The examination ia almost nothing. Not so at Oxford, 
 where the whole system would present to you considerable difficulty." 
 " Surely as you are so well known in Ireland you might find a favourable 
 bishop in that country, and the journey would be the work of a fortnight. 
 At any rate, pray do not give up your excellent plans, degotite." ' ' I will in 
 your absence, without mentioning your name, make every inquiry I can. 
 The stability and well-being of our Church depends so much upon the 
 respectability and fitness of its ministers that we can only quarrel with 
 those forms and preliminaries to ordination when they come in competi- 
 tion with our own favourite wishes " ! 
 
 In a note-book of 1815 there occurs a most formidable list of books which 
 it seems Murchison had jotted down with the intention of using them in his 
 proposed clerical education. They are in Greek, Latin, French, Italian, 
 and English, and with his characteristic methodical habits he has classi- 
 fied them under various heads, as ".Religion," " Eloquence," " History," 
 " Belles-Lettres," etc. etc. 
 
CHAPTEE V. 
 
 ITALY AND ART. 
 
 WITH the proposal of a country parson's lot still undecided, 
 and indeed with no settled plans for the future, Mr. and Mrs. 
 Murchison had determined in the meantime to spend a year 
 or two abroad. This resolution had been, in some measure, 
 forced upon them by the state of their finances. The Tarra- 
 dale rents, never very well paid, even at the best, had almost 
 ceased to yield any income, and times were so bad that the 
 tenantry petitioned for alleviation. His revenue from other 
 sources was not great, certainly not enough to enable the 
 young laird and his wife to live comfortably in England. 
 It was sufficient, however, to permit them to enjoy comfort, 
 and even elegance, in Italy. So that, until some decision 
 had been come to regarding the fate of the Highland pro- 
 perty, a sojourn on the Continent was deemed absolutely 
 necessary. 
 
 This enforced exile, however, proved in the end emi- 
 nently advantageous in other than a pecuniary sense. Mrs. 
 Murchison had shrewdly discerned her husband's true nature 
 and the way in which it should be developed. She saw that 
 
74 SIR RODERICK MURCHISON. [isie. 
 
 with his tastes and habits he would be far less likely to 
 break off from a useless kind of life at home than if placed 
 amidst a totally new set of pursuits and acquaintances 
 abroad. And thus the continental sojourn was planned 
 and the notes of travel were prepared that the foreign 
 scenery and associations should act as powerfully as possible 
 on his mind. It was a sagacious experiment, and it suc- 
 ceeded. In this chapter we have to trace how it was carried 
 out. Its fruits will appear in later pages. 
 
 On Good Friday 1816 the young pair sailed from Dover, 
 and taking with them their own carriage, posted by easy 
 stages from Calais to Paris. About a year had elapsed 
 since the hurried flight from that capital noticed in the 
 preceding chapter, and now the masons were found to be 
 busy on scaffolds removing the letter N from the public 
 buildings. On that previous visit Murchison had made 
 himself tolerably familiar with the contents of the Louvre, 
 then enriched with the spoils of Europe ; and his first 
 object now was to see how the galleries looked after having 
 been made to yield back their treasures to the rightful 
 owners. He was " astonished to observe how rapidly the 
 vacant places had been filled up, and not unfrequently by 
 good old Italian pictures, which had also been stolen, but 
 which not having been exposed in the Great Gallery were 
 not known to exist in France." 
 
 During a most systematic tour of the sights of Paris he 
 attended a meeting of the Academy (which many years later 
 was to enrol him among its foreign members), and saw Cuvier 
 for the first time, who declaimed upon the influence of the 
 sciences on the common occupations of man, and upon the 
 leading share which France had taken in promoting this 
 
isle.] GENEVA SUNDAYS. 75 
 
 influence a share which would have been yet greater 
 had it not been thwarted by the perfide politique of 
 England. 
 
 From Paris they journeyed in the same leisurely way 
 by Dijon to Geneva. Though Murchison had as yet shown 
 no special interest in science, .he now began to make the 
 acquaintance of scientific men in the places he visited, and 
 paid some attention to their museums. At Geneva, for 
 example, he met among others Pictet the naturalist, and De 
 Candolle the botanist. He found too that " the same rigid 
 solemnity was observed there on the streets on Sunday as 
 in Edinburgh all demure and starch." "I induced," he 
 writes, " good Madame Peschier to go a drive (and we had 
 been at morning service), but when descending the steep 
 street from the house a grave-looking churchwarden, who 
 was going to afternoon service in his black silk stockings 
 and a gold chain, came up to us, and holding out his watch, 
 pulled up our horse, and exclaimed, ' Madame Peschier, je 
 suis etonne* ! vous auriez du connaltre que pendant les 
 heures de 1'eglise on ne va pas en voiture/ " 
 
 The summer was spent at Vevay, where he took a little 
 villa. His wife's ancestors had come into England from 
 that part of the Pays de Vaud about a hundred years before. 
 She found some distant relations there who made the sojourn 
 at Vevay a memorably pleasant one. Many excursions 
 were made to surrounding parts of Switzerland, the ladies 
 usually driving or riding, while Murchison himself delighted 
 in keeping pace with them on foot. Leaving his wife in 
 charge of her Swiss cousins, he undertook some feats of 
 pedestrianism of which he used to boast in his old age. On 
 one occasion he walked 452 miles in fourteen days, on 
 
76 SIR RODERICK MURCHISON. [isie-17. 
 
 the last day of which excursion he accomplished 57 miles. 
 In another excursion to Mont Blanc he walked 120 miles in 
 three days. Such rapid marching is suggestive rather of 
 exultation in bodily activity than of intelligent appreciation 
 of scenery. Yet his singular power of rapidly seizing the main 
 features of a landscape enabled him to carry away some vivid 
 impressions of what he saw, and even to note some of the 
 details. In his itinerary journal, he speaks of the Grindel- 
 wald glacier as a " river of ice," and among his notes there 
 occurs a detailed narrative of the processes in use at one of 
 the Swiss salt-mines. 
 
 An interesting episode of their life at Vevay may be 
 noticed here. A terrific thunderstorm broke one night (1 3th 
 June) over the lake in front of them, and, roused from sleep, 
 they sat watching from the window a scene never to be 
 forgotten. Some months afterwards they read at Borne the 
 now well-known lines in the then newly published Third 
 Canto of Childe Harold : 
 
 " And this is in the night ! Most glorious is the night, 
 
 Thou wert not sent for slumber ! let me be 
 
 A sharer in thy fierce and far delight, 
 
 A portion of the tempest and of thee ! 
 
 How the lit lake shines, a phosphoric sea, 
 
 And the big rain comes dancing to the earth ! 
 
 And now again 'tis black, and now, the glee 
 
 Of the loud hills shakes with its mountain-mirth 
 As if it did rejoice o'er a young earthquake's birth." 
 
 The passage recalled their experience at Vevay, and brought 
 to their recollection that they had met Byron walking from 
 Vevay to Clarens on the day before the thunderstorm which 
 he has immortalized. 
 
 The winter of 1816-17 was passed at Genoa, studying 
 Italian, and kindling a passion for art and art-galleries, which 
 
1817.] ROME AND THE GALLERIES. 77 
 
 a few months later was to burst into a most portentous blaze 
 at Rome. Murchison found opportunity too of practising his 
 favourite exercise walking, in which, as his notes record, 
 he outstripped two young officers since known as intrepid 
 travellers Irby and Mangles. In one of his excursions 
 marine shells were noted upon some of the hill-tops, and he 
 infers that these high grounds were once under the sea. 
 
 By the 21st of March, ere Holy Week began, the two 
 travellers had reached Eome. Owing to the cessation of the 
 war and the reopening of the Continent, the city happened 
 to be at this time crowded with strangers. 
 
 Established, however, in a private lodging in the Via 
 Condotti, Murchison avoided gaiety, and became now a con- 
 firmed dilettante. Day by day, accompanied and incited by 
 his wife, he visited gallery after gallery, and church after 
 church, making elaborate notes on the pictures and other 
 works of art. He seems to have left little in Eome unseen, 
 and his jottings, written at a time when the profuse modern 
 literature of " Guide-books " and " Hand-books " had not yet 
 made its appearance, show a creditable degree of zeal and 
 intelligence. The general style and tenor of those art-notes 
 and criticisms may be judged of from the following specimen 
 of his journal : 
 
 "Rome, June 13th, 1817. Palazzo Colonna. Four 
 superb landscapes of Salvator Eosa (doubtful) ; marine views, 
 with armed men and fishermen in the foreground. The 
 light and distances have the light of Claude, the foreground 
 less of the savageness of Salvator than usual. Two fine 
 heads of Carlo Dolci, one St. Catherine, the other a saint 
 chained. Some good heads of Guercino, and a fine small 
 piece or two by Conca. Many good landscapes of Poussin 
 
78 SIR RODERICK MURCHISON. [isir. 
 
 in tempera, and one beautiful bluish landscape of Lucatelli, 
 marine, with great depth : this is in his best style. The 
 Bella Cenci needs no description. Guido is more expressive 
 here than in his fine exuberant Madonna above stairs. 
 There are two little Claudes, and a Titian, etc. There are a 
 good many pictures of the inferior and later Eoman artists ; 
 some of these are pleasing. Gaetano Lapis (1776), a scholar 
 of Conca ; same light colouring, but no confidence in him- 
 self. His best picture here appeared to me a Lazarus with 
 Christ (doubtful). The frescos of Stefano Pozzi in first room 
 are bright and pretty (Turk smoking). The column of Bellona 
 (twisted) of rosso antico, with Pallas on the top, very beautiful. 
 A Dead Christ by Franc Trevisani (d. 1746. Sc. Eom.), 
 not Angelo Trevisani (Venet. Sc. same epoch). In this 
 Christ the foreshortening is remarkable, the colouring 
 Guidesco. He was a universal imitator." 
 
 Of the acquaintances whom Murchison made at Rome 
 the most notable was the sculptor Canova, with whom he 
 had frequent intercourse at the house of Cavaliere Tambroni, 
 then a sort of chief of art. From his journal and a pencil 
 note written late in life the following reminiscences of the 
 sculptor are given : 
 
 "When asked what he thought the most wonderful 
 structure in Britain (for he had recently visited England), 
 he at once replied, ' Waterloo Bridge.' Of the antiquities in 
 the British Museum he gave unquestionable precedence to 
 the Ilissus of the Parthenon, preferring it on account of the 
 inimitable schiena to the Theseus. 
 
 "He narrated to me how he overcame Buonaparte's 
 obstinacy, who at first insisted that the great sculptor 
 should represent him in marble in the garb of the con- 
 
1817.] REMINISCENCES OF CANOVA. 79 
 
 quering French General with cocked hat, straight cut coat, 
 and top-boots hunting-boots ' a 1' Anglais.' Canova stood 
 firm in refusing, and when he said to the future Napoleon, 
 ' Then your Excellency must find other artists, and I can 
 recommend both a tailor and a bootmaker in the Corso,' the 
 Corsican at once saw a man of taste and genius must have 
 his own way, and Napoleon came out in classical toga, etc. 
 
 " Canova was a very active man, and when debarred of 
 his exercise by too much work in the studio, he was in the 
 habit of jumping backwards and forwards over his modest 
 bed, and, proud of his agility, he did it before me. 
 
 " This eminent sculptor passes an hour or two every 
 evening at Madame Tambroni's ; at nine o'clock he invari- 
 ably retires. Had a long conversation with him the other 
 night. He observed to me, that when in London nothing 
 offended his eye more than the smoky brick houses with 
 clear painted windows, and was surprised they were not all 
 white- washed. He spoke of the absolute necessity of our 
 having a museum superior to that of Somerset House. The 
 education of English women delighted him, and he the more 
 regretted the state of his own compatriotes. He asked why 
 all the English began their Italian with Dante and Boccaccio. 
 Metastasio seems to be his favourite author. The style of 
 the one in literature is similar to that of the other in sculp- 
 ture both chaste, classical, graceful, and full of pathos. He 
 said of Metastasio's critics, ' Quei che lo criticano, lo leggono ; 
 e poi piangono.' 
 
 " In Canova's studio no one appears more conspicuously 
 than the distorted Giaccomino. Ask him where he has been, 
 and he answers, ' We have been modelling above stairs, il 
 cavaliere ed io.' Giaccomino was a poor, good-humoured 
 
80 SIR RODERICK MURCHISON. [isir. 
 
 countryman, whom Canova employed as a sort of lower ser- 
 vant in the workshop. He sometimes hands the morsels of 
 clay to his master whilst he is forming the cast, and from 
 hence Giaccomino concludes that at least half the merit is 
 his own. He freely canvasses every new attitude, and 
 Canova says, ' E mio maestro Giaccomino,' and always asks 
 for his opinion upon any new work. In these little traits 
 the playful bonhomie of the great sculptor is pleasingly 
 exhibited. 
 
 " To judge of Canova's simplicity, examine his house. 
 You will find every article neat and appropriate ; no luxury, 
 but the utmost cleanliness and regularity doubly delightful 
 in so filthy a country. Two of his bedrooms are ornamented 
 with his own paintings. During the French invasion he 
 occupied himself for eighteen months with the brush and 
 palette. The compositions are in general just what you 
 might look for from the graceful mind of the artist a 
 sleeping Venus intruded upon by a peeping Satyr, Venus 
 with Cupids, etc. The colouring is Titianesco, and very 
 wonderful. These pictures have already the mellowed tone 
 of the colouring of the old masters ; and a head of an old 
 carter (a portrait from life) is painted expressly to deceive 
 as an antique. 
 
 " Madame T. related to me, that when Canova first 
 imagined his group of the Graces, he happened to be in the 
 country visiting the Cavaliere T. Here there were no fine 
 models, but females must be found. Accordingly, two large 
 and fat female domestics of Madame T. were paraded, who, 
 with herself, formed the graceful trio. Their attitudes must 
 have been most diverting to Canova whilst he drilled and 
 practised them. Canova is now nearly sixty years of age, yet 
 
1817.] ROME AND NAPLES. 81 
 
 constitution and physical powers are such that he can jump 
 over his bedstead ct pie pari, and can extend a prodigious 
 weight with his arm." 
 
 Three months specially given up to fine art soon passed 
 away in Borne. The journal in which the record of that 
 time was so elaborately chronicled is, however, more a dry 
 inventory of what the writer saw than of what he thought 
 and felt. 1 Now and then he varied his researches by an 
 excursion into the country, but an unfortunate event cut 
 short these occupations. His wife caught a malaria fever, 
 and became so ill that he despaired of her life. Eallying at 
 last, she was able to be moved from Eome at the end of 
 June to seek a change of air and the sea-breeze at Naples. 
 
 Full of details though the journal is regarding the 
 stay at Naples, little occurs of any general interest, or 
 which throws any fresh light upon Murchison's own char- 
 acter and development. He visited, of course, all the 
 usual places of resort in that neighbourhood. The nearer 
 excursions were made with his wife, but in company with a 
 military friend he accomplished a series of boating expedi- 
 tions to Pa3stum, Capri, Ischia, and Procida, seeing a good 
 deal both of scenery and of Italian life outside of the ordi- 
 nary beaten track of tourists. He was lucky enough to 
 come in for an eruption of Vesuvius, and ascended the 
 
 1 No mention occurs in the journal of his havin at this time made the 
 acquaintance of Mrs. Somerville and her husband. In her charming 
 Personal Recollections (p. 122), she thus alludes to the incident: "Our 
 great geologist, Sir Roderick Murchison, with his wife, were among the 
 English residents at Rome. At that time he hardly knew one stone from 
 another. He had been an officer in the Dragoons, an excellent horseman, 
 and a keen fox-hunter. Lady Murchison, an amiable and accomplished 
 woman, with solid acquirements, which few ladies at that time possessed. 
 ... It was then that a friendship began between them and us, which 
 will only end with lifo." 
 
 VOL. I. F 
 
82 SIR RODERICK MURCHISON. [m?. 
 
 mountain when a current of lava was streaming down its 
 side. To get the better view he made the ascent by night, 
 and there being no moon, had an impressive view of the 
 huge lurid crater, with its rocket-like showers of red-hot 
 stones, and scrambled over the hardened but still hot surface 
 of lava to see where the molten mass came out in a glowing 
 stream from the side of the cone. His notes of this visit 
 are simply those of an intelligent and interested spectator ; 
 they betray not the slightest geological predilection. 
 
 In Naples, as in Rome, his favourite occupation was to 
 visit the art-galleries and altar-pieces in the churches, and 
 to write out detailed descriptions of the pictures and statues 
 in his journal. Even the sight of the miracle of the 
 liquefying of the blood of St. Januarius could hardly inter- 
 rupt the art-fever ; for though the saint gratified the curio- 
 sity of the two travellers and the prayers of the orthodox by 
 thawing the blood in three minutes instead of keeping them 
 waiting for hours, the enthusiastic but irreverent dilettante 
 writes in his diary, " We slipped away from the altar to 
 admire, not the works of the saint, but the sublime repre- 
 sentations of them by Domenichino." 
 
 Early in October 1817 Murchison returned with his 
 wife to Rome, and wintered there. Art again became his 
 absorbing pursuit. Every gallery was once more visited, 
 fresh notes were duly entered in his journals. His criticisms, 
 after a few months of experience, are spiced with the dog- 
 matism and the pet phrases of a confirmed connoisseur of 
 many years' standing. 
 
 Having taken his fill of art and the galleries, Murchison 
 next set to work with equal industry upon the antiquities 
 of Rome. A good part of the winter of 1817-18 was spent 
 
1817-18.] ANTIQUARIAN RAMBLES IN ROME. 83 
 
 in sedulously tracing the lines of the several walls, and the 
 position and remains of temples and public buildings. He 
 entered with his characteristic zeal into the disputed locali- 
 ties of the Forum, and not content with reading such of the 
 lucubrations on this subject as he could reach, he wrote in 
 his journal voluminous comments of his own upon previous 
 writers, and gave the observations he himself had made, 
 with the conclusions to which they had led him. He re- 
 vived his long disused and never very familiar Horace, 
 Virgil, and Juvenal, with whose allusions to Eome and 
 Eoman sites he interspersed his notes. The following 
 extracts may suffice as a specimen of the style of these 
 antiquarian memoranda : 
 " Grotto o 
 
 1 In vallem ^Egeriae descendimus atque spelimcas 
 Dissimiles veris.' 
 
 In Juvenal's day great had been the alteration of the 
 little consecrated grot of old Numa, which was of tufa. 
 Now this is the only tufa cavern in this valley. In the 
 time of Cicero the simple old cavern was decorated with 
 marbles and statues, and became ' dissimiles veris ;' now 
 the present work as extant, and the reticulated brick, are 
 all of the latter end of the Eepublic. The recumbent statue 
 of the man proves nothing, as the figure evidently repre- 
 sents a river (viz. the Almo, which rises here), from the urn 
 under his arm. The goddess might have been placed in the 
 same niche above him. Everything marks this distinctly to 
 have been the sacred spot. 
 
 " Templum Rediculi. Positively a temple and no tomb, 
 Mr. Eustace. 1 The cella and component parts remain. 
 
 1 He refers to Eustace's Classical Tour a work which he studied 
 
84 SIR RODERICK MURCHISON. [isir-is. 
 
 Hannibal might first have appeared here, and then making 
 a detour might have encamped on the other side of the 
 town. It has been rebuilt in the age of Severus. Four 
 styles of architecture are to be observed in it. 
 
 "Baths of Caracalla. Double purpose, bathing and 
 amusement. The baths were below ground, and had no 
 communication with the halls above, no staircase having 
 ever been discovered. The great portico to the west, with 
 the various little chambers, was a quarter for troops, from 
 which a spiral staircase conducted to a terrace above for 
 parade and exercise ; but no communication took place by 
 doors between these chambers. The grand central mass of 
 building was entirely enveloped and shut in from sight by 
 a still more vast pile. These covers or cases for buildings 
 were common to the Romans, for in this exterior an uni- 
 form height was preserved, which hid all the inequalities 
 of height and construction of the internal pile. This will 
 account for the arches of different elevations. . . . 
 
 " Cecilia Metella. Eepublican work : crowned with an 
 entablature, and formerly with an attic and a dome. 
 
 " Forum Romanum. 
 
 ' Vespertinumque pererro 
 Saepe Forum.' HOR. Sat. I. vi. 
 
 Old Horace could not have enjoyed his evening walk there 
 more than I do, and one great delight consists in the ima- 
 gining that I behold some relics of those very buildings 
 which he admired. Away then, ye cold sceptics who drive 
 everything to such an extreme that at last ye begin to 
 doubt whether ancient Eome did really exist here, or 
 
 before leaving England, and which he seems to have carried about with 
 him in Italy, and to have found as unsatisfactory a guide as Byron did. 
 (See Note xxxii. to Canto iv. of Childe Harold.) 
 
IBIS.] RAMBLES IN THE ROMAN CAMPAGNA. 85 
 
 whether the Tiber may not have changed its course ! They 
 will tell you (even Nardin and others) that most part of the 
 columns have been re-erected in subsequent ages on or near 
 the spot where they had fallen or been pulled down. But, 
 oh ye learned sceptics ! what Pope, Antipope, or Goth, may 
 I humbly crave, would ever have had the genius of archi- 
 tecture and the love of classical remains impressed so deeply 
 on his mind that he should wish to raise up broken entab- 
 latures of colossal size, and mutilated columns, in order that 
 he might be called a man of taste ? If, therefore, none of 
 these re -erections took place in the dark ages, which I 
 think any reasonable man will allow, we can have little 
 difficulty in proving that such attempts have not been made 
 since the revival of letters in the fifteenth century. Private 
 and public history are both silent on this point, whilst on a 
 number of trivial little subjects, such as that Lorenzo di 
 Medici robbed the Dacian captives on the Arch of Con- 
 stantine of their heads, and other similar facts, we have 
 abundant details." 
 
 While this antiquarian fever lasted, he made an excur- 
 sion on foot to Praeneste, walked along ancient highways 
 now deserted, but still level and unbroken, looked into the 
 memorable crater-hollow of the lake of Eegillus, with a half- 
 antiquarian, half-military, but in nowise geological eye, 
 remarking that the allies had much the better position, since 
 the Ptomans had to charge up hill ; scrambled up to the 
 Cyclopean walls of Prseneste, and from the summit of the 
 town let his eye wander over that marvellous landscape, so 
 rich in association, from the far southern Apennines away 
 across the Alban and Volscian hills, into the limitless 
 Campagna. 
 
86 SIR RODERICK MURCHISON. [IMS. 
 
 About the middle of March (1818) Mr. and Mrs. Mur- 
 chison quitted Eome for a leisurely journey homewards. 
 At Florence they lingered for three weeks, chiefly among 
 the galleries and museums. Again his note-books teem with 
 descriptions and criticisms of the pictures, his later studies 
 at Eome having given him greater confidence than ever in 
 his judgments oh art. Michael Angelo receives a special 
 measure of his critical wrath. More interesting is it to 
 mark that among his notes of Florence some space is 
 given to an account of the Museum of Natural History, 
 particularly that portion in which the successive stages in 
 the growth of animals were illustrated. From Florence the 
 journey led by short stages, and with many a halt, to 
 Bologna, Modena, Parma, and Turin, thence by Mont Cenis 
 into Switzerland, and then by way of Lyons to Paris, and 
 so home. 
 
 Eather more than two years had thus glided away on 
 the Continent ; two memorable years in Murchison's life. 
 They taught him, in a way which would have been little 
 likely to occur to him at home, the superiority of such pur- 
 suits as called for the exercise of thought and taste over the 
 more frivolous employments of barrack-life. It is true that 
 his wife was always at his side to share in his pleasures and 
 incite him to further perseverance in the new line of occu- 
 pation. But her influence was little needed after the first 
 decided tendency had been given to his inclinations. He 
 soon became a far more enthusiastic lover of art than she, 
 and must no doubt have often tried her bodily strength to 
 the utmost in his hunt through churches and galleries for 
 Guidos and Eaphaels, Caraccis and Domenichinos, in all 
 the stages and styles of each painter. For the time, he was 
 
1818.] INFLUENCE FROM ART. 87 
 
 absorbed in art and Roman antiquities. It was the first 
 taste he had yet had of the pleasures of continuous intel- 
 lectual employment, and he threw himself into it with all 
 the eagerness and enthusiasm of his nature. 
 
 He had a natural weakness for display, which in his 
 military days, as we have seen, took shape in fashionable 
 clothes, horses, and the other extravagances by which a 
 young man in the army contrives to get rid of his money. 
 In Italy no such temptation came in his way. For the time 
 he was left to the influence of his wife and his own better 
 nature, with the result of receiving a deeper and better im- 
 press on his character from these two years abroad than from 
 his eight years in uniform. Unconsciously he was sowing 
 seeds which would in after years bear fruit of a very different 
 kind. Through art he first realized the advantage of a dis- 
 tinctly intellectual life over one of mere desultory gaiety. 
 It was not art which was to furnish his future stimulus, 
 and, as we shall find, it did not even suffice to keep him 
 from relapsing into some of his old ways when the tempta- 
 tion came back again. But his art-studies in Italy formed 
 the starting-point of a new life for him, and led the way 
 to all the work and honours that were to come. 
 
CHAPTEK VI. 
 
 FIVE YEARS OF FOX-HUNTING. 
 
 WHEN Murchison and his wife found themselves in Eng- 
 land again, two questions pressed upon them for immediate 
 solution : Where were they to take up house ? and, What were 
 they to do ? In spite of Mrs. Murchison's fortune, money 
 was not so plentiful with them as they wished. The Tarra- 
 dale tenants, owing to more stringent prohibition of illicit 
 distillation, found many excuses for evading the payment of 
 their rents, so that although the young couple could live 
 comfortably enough in Italy, there seemed some difficulty in 
 the way of their setting up house at home in the style 
 to which they had all along been used. The rent of the 
 property was at this time a little more than 500, but pro- 
 bably not more than about the half of that sum could be 
 collected. The long-threatened sale was therefore now 
 finally resolved upon, and in August 1818, for 27,000, 
 Baillie of Dochfour became the purchaser. Immediately 
 after his return from abroad Murchison went north alone 
 to make the concluding arrangements, and from that time 
 ceased to be any longer a Highland laird. 
 
1818.] BECOMES A FOX-HUNTER. 89 
 
 Having thus got rid of the troublesome tenants in the 
 north, he had next to find a home somewhere for his wife 
 and himself. Mrs. Murchison's grandfather, a veteran of the 
 Flanders wars, had passed the last twenty years of his long 
 life in an old mansion at Barnard Castle, in the county of 
 Durham. This house, now tenantless, was chosen, and there 
 Murchison set up his first manage in England. 
 
 The change from the pursuits and sights of Eome and 
 Naples to the dulness of a little country town in the north 
 of England could not but prove a sore trial to the lately de- 
 veloped tastes of the retired Captain. The old General, whose 
 house they now occupied, had been a favourite in the district, 
 and for his sake at first, and afterwards for their own, the 
 new-comers had a hospitable reception from the county- folk 
 of the neighbourhood. But receiving calls and paying them 
 was hardly occupation enough for any reasonably active 
 creature. Art- studies were no longer possible; his wife's 
 gathering of plants and minerals had not yet sufficed to show 
 him what a scientific pursuit really was ; there seemed but 
 one path of escape from insufferable ennui, and Murchison 
 chose it. He took heart and soul to field-sports, and became 
 one of the greatest fox-hunters in the north of England. 
 
 For five years this desultory life lasted. It seemed as if 
 the influence of the foreign tour had vanished, and left no 
 sign. At some of the houses of the neighbourhood Kokeby, 
 for instance guests distinguished for culture and literary or 
 scientific eminence used from time to time to be gathered, 
 and in these gatherings Murchison and his wife gladly took 
 part. They only just missed Sir Walter Scott. They formed 
 an intimacy with Sir Humphry Davy, and made the ac- 
 quaintance of other notabilities. These were pleasant inter- 
 
90 SIR RODERICK MUROHISON. [isis-23. 
 
 ludes, and helped to vary a little the dulness of Barnard 
 Castle and the monotony of hunting. But field-sports con- 
 tinued to be the main business of life, since they furnished 
 the readiest outlet for that exuberant bodily activity which 
 had all along formed one of Murchison's special character- 
 istics. 
 
 As a diversion from these more ordinary and engrossing 
 pursuits, he on one occasion of a contested election for the 
 county of Durham took an active part on the Tory side, 
 scouring the country far and wide on horseback for voters, 
 bringing them up to the poll ; but in the end beating an in- 
 glorious retreat with the unpopular candidate, amid showers 
 of cabbages, rotten eggs, and other electioneering missiles. 
 A further variety was found in an occasional excursion to 
 Scotland, or in visits to sporting friends in the north of 
 England. 
 
 It was not without concern that Mrs. Murchison marked 
 this relapse into that purposeless kind of life from which her 
 husband seemed for a time in a fair way of being weaned. 
 She had some knowledge of botany, and had induced him in 
 the course of their walks and excursions to assist her in form- 
 ing a herbarium. But she could not make him a botanist. 
 While residing in the north of England she took to the study 
 of mineralogy, and made some progress in collecting and 
 distinguishing some of the more common minerals found in 
 that part of the country. Her husband looked on and helped 
 her where he could ; but neither was mineralogy the kind of 
 pursuit to enlist his sympathies, and call out his special 
 powers. "The noble science of fox-hunting," he says of 
 himself, "was then my dominant passion, and as I had 
 acquired a little reputation in the north as a hard rider, I 
 
1818-23.] THE FOX-HUNTING FEVER. 91 
 
 resolved to play the great game, increase my stud, and settle 
 for a year or two at Melton Mowbray, in Leicestershire." 
 
 Instead of calming down, therefore, the hunting fever 
 broke out with renewed virulence. The migration south- 
 wards duly took place, to the great mortification of his wife, 
 who had reason to dread the effects of the change both upon 
 his character and his purse. He rented a good house at 
 Melton Mowbray, kept eight hunters, a horse for his wife, 
 and a hack, and subscribed 50 a year to a pack of hounds. 
 " These and other expenses were," he says, " more than enough 
 for my means. Thus I was led to speculate by investing in 
 foreign funds, and obtain an income of 2000 per annum, 
 which, with occasional drafts upon my 'floating capital,' 
 kept us going." 
 
 He paid a visit to the north of Scotland in 1822, and 
 his arrival in Edinburgh happened to coincide with that of 
 George iv., whose entrance he witnessed from the Calton 
 Hill, noting especially the beaming face and white hair of 
 Walter Scott as he marched jauntily along in front of the 
 royal carriage. 
 
 Back at Melton, he recommenced the earnest business of 
 the winter by resuming his place at the hunt, and indulging 
 in further gaieties. 1 The following reminiscences of this 
 time were written late in life : " On Sundays, after six days' 
 hard work, we were necessarily very sleepy, and on one 
 occasion when the sermon was preached for the Missionary 
 Society, and the parson went on to describe the life of the 
 savages to be Christianized hunting all the week, and lying 
 
 1 By way of compromise, apparently, and in compliance with his wife's 
 more literary tastes, he kept his elaborate daily hunting journal this 
 winter (1822-3) in French. 
 
92 SIR RODERICK MURCHISON. [1822. 
 
 exhausted and sleepy in their houses, all the ladies' eyes 
 were turned upon their drowsy mates." 
 
 " On one occasion I gave a dinner, and invited Scotch- 
 men only, viz., Elcho, Graham (now Duke of Montrose), 
 Grant, Melville, etc.; and as I could find no blacksmith to 
 singe the head, I performed myself in my own stable-yard, 
 to the great amusement of the groom and helpers." 
 
 "I was the only person who regularly smoked at the 
 covert- side, or when they went away, and the fox was lost. 
 On one of the latter occasions, and when Graham was cast- 
 ing and re- casting his hounds, and was unable to hit off the 
 scent, he hollowed out sulkily, ' Tis no use trying to do any- 
 thing when that pipe spoils the scent!' So strong 
 
 was the feeling then against smoking as a bad and ungentle- 
 manlike habit, that when Fernley painted a picture which 
 we, the subscribers to the pack, presented to Graham, I was 
 at first represented on my brown horse Commodore, turning 
 my head round, with a cigar in my mouth. The cigar was 
 afterwards, however, painted out. The picture is at Norton 
 Conyers, in Yorkshire." 
 
 Save gossip of this kind, with full notes of his almost 
 daily hunts, and references to the companions with whom he 
 rode, smoked, and dined, the visits which he and his wife 
 occasionally paid, and the people whom they met on such 
 occasions, no record of these five hunting years has been 
 preserved. 1 There seems, indeed, to have been little else to 
 chronicle. During the times of hard frost, when the usual 
 
 1 One of his journals gives a detailed narrative of every hunt from 3d 
 November 1821 to April 11, 1822, during which period he was 110 times 
 with the hounds. In his usual methodical style he has constructed a table 
 with columns, in which is entered the work done by each of the twelve 
 hunters which he used. 
 
1823.] THE FOX-HUNTING FEVER. 93 
 
 out-of-door occupations were interrupted, he would take once 
 more to books. On one of these occasions he seems to have 
 revived for a while his antiquarian tendencies by reading and 
 making extracts from Blunt's Vestiges of Ancient Manners 
 and Customs in Italy and Sicily. But the books were ex- 
 changed for the saddle when the weather suited again. 
 
 The letters written during these fox-hunting years to his 
 brother Kenneth, then in the East Indies, abound with grave 
 moral sentences on the duty of submission to our lot, and 
 the necessity for economy and care when our means are 
 small ! Yet they teem with tender affection, and show their 
 writer to have had an earnest love for his brother, with the 
 fullest interest in all that concerned him. The solicitude 
 with which he appears to have watched over a little niece 
 confided to his care and that of his wife, and the almost 
 fatherly delight with which he recounts all her ways and 
 her progress, betoken great tenderness of heart, with much 
 considerate feeling in the way of showing his kindness. 
 
 His wife had from the first truly perceived that at bot- 
 tom there lay in Murchison something more than the char- 
 acter of a mere Mmrod. It was needful that his overflowing 
 animal spirits and bodily activity should find adequate outlet, 
 but she fully believed that when these parts of his nature 
 had in some measure spent themselves, the higher part of 
 his character would come to the surface. If he really had 
 any more intellectual tendencies than were required for fox- 
 hunting, he must needs in the end get tired of such unremit- 
 ting application to that pursuit, and then those tendencies 
 would be sure to claim a hearing from him. And so it 
 came to pass. 
 
 Forty years after the time at which we are now arrived, 
 
94 SIR RODERICK MURCHISON. [isa. 
 
 Mtirchison was sojourning for health's sake at the baths of 
 Marienbad, in Bohemia, and penned there the following 
 recollections of the events which brought his fox-hunting 
 life to a close : 
 
 " As time rolled on I got Uasd and tired of all fox- 
 hunting life. In the summer following the hunting season 
 of 1822-3, when revisiting my old friend Morritt of Eokeby, 
 I fell in with Sir Humphry Davy, and experienced much 
 gratification in his lively illustrations of great physical truths. 
 As we shot partridges together in the morning, I perceived 
 that a man might pursue philosophy without abandoning 
 field-sports; and Davy, seeing that I had already made ob- 
 servations on the Alps and Apennines, independently of my 
 antiquarian rambles, encouraged me to come to London and 
 set to at science by attending lectures on chemistry, etc. As 
 my wife naturally backed up this advice, and Sir Humphry 
 said he would soon get me into the Royal Society, I was 
 fairly and easily booked. 
 
 " Before I took the step of making myself a Cockney I 
 sold my horses. The two best were put up at auction in 
 the ensuing autumn, after dinner, at the Old Club at Melton, 
 and were brought into the room after a jolly dinner, Maxse 
 acting as auctioneer. In fact I threw them away, and Maker 
 who bought the ' Commodore,' named him ' Potash,' as a 
 quiz on me for taking so much of that alkali after our 
 potations." 
 
 The decision to sell his hunters and renounce the ex- 
 pensive life at Melton was probably dictated more by a 
 prudent regard to ways and means than by any special 
 charms yet visible in the prospect of a life of scientific exer- 
 tion. At all events we find, that when the Melton establish- 
 
1824.] SELLS HIS HUNTERS. 95 
 
 ment was broken up he did not immediately set up another, 
 but went to reside for a time with his father-in-law. The 
 winter of 1823-4 was passed chiefly at Nursted House, and 
 seems to have slipt away without much indication that he 
 had resolved to change his main pursuits. Were not the 
 Hambledon hounds at hand, with old Parson Richards at 
 their head, and Wyndham's drove pack careering in close 
 column up the steep faces of the downs ? Did not Up Park 
 offer attractions in its pheasant covers such as few other pre- 
 serves in England could show ? Need we wonder, then, 
 that the necessity for a new horse became only too apparent ! 
 It was but a low-priced hack-hunter this time, yet a service- 
 able animal, which carried its rider to probably as many 
 meets as took place that winter within access of Nursted. 
 And not that winter only, but the summer following, went 
 past without apparently any further action in the way of 
 carrying out the projected scientific programme. We find 
 the retired sportsman sojourning for a long time in the south 
 of Scotland during that summer, visiting friends, shooting, 
 and in short living as much after the old fashion as if he had 
 never seen Davy at Rokeby, and no visions of chemistry 
 lectures had ever floated before him. 
 
 But the momentous epoch of his life was now fast ap- 
 proaching. This summer of 1824 saw the last of his rambles 
 wherein the rocks around him made no direct and urgent 
 appeal to him. Henceforth he was to have an occupation 
 even more absorbing than any which had yet held him in 
 thrall, and into this new employment he was to carry all 
 the energy which had hitherto marked his doings in other 
 pursuits. 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 RISE OF GEOLOGY IN BRITAIN. 
 
 AT last Murchison had found a calling wherein his love 
 of out-of-door life, and his inclination towards an intellec- 
 tual employment of some sort, could find fitting scope. From 
 this time forward it was to be his good fortune to have one 
 engrossing occupation, which, while furnishing abundant 
 exercise and amusement, should ere long enable him to 
 make his name a kind of household word among geologists 
 in every part of the world. 
 
 How it came about that a man with no previous scientific 
 training should have been able to gain such a reputation, 
 and gain it so rapidly, deserves our consideration. We 
 might conjecture either that the science could have been no 
 very recondite matter, or that the man must have been pos- 
 sessed of very extraordinary powers. Neither supposition 
 would be quite just. Such was the state of geological science 
 at the time, that a great work could be done by a man with 
 a quick eye, a good judgment, a clear notion of what had 
 already been accomplished, and a stout pair of legs. 
 
 It is of importance that the reader should see how this 
 
HUTTONIAN AND WERNERIAN WARFARE. 97 
 
 came to be the case, in order that he may adequately realize 
 what Murchison's life-work actually was. I would ask him, 
 therefore, to accompany me in a necessarily brief survey of 
 the condition of geology in this country during the first 
 quarter of this century, with a glance at some of the 
 more salient characteristics of the leading geologists among 
 whom the retired captain and fox-hunter was now to take 
 his place. We shall in this way be enabled to follow more 
 definitely the kind of work which lay open to his hand, and 
 to note what incentives and obstacles surrounded him on his 
 entry upon this new career. 
 
 Looking back to the beginning of this century, we see 
 the geologists of Britain divided into two hostile camps, who 
 waged against each other a keen and even an embittered 
 warfare. On the one hand were the followers of Hutton 
 of Edinburgh, called from him Huttonians, sometimes also 
 Vulcanists or Plutonists ; on the other, the disciples of 
 Werner of Freiberg, in Saxony, who went by the name of 
 Wernerians, or Neptunists. The strife lasted almost up to 
 Murchison's time, though it had in its last years waxed 
 faint and fitful. But many of the combatants who had been 
 in the thick of the fight were still alive when he assumed 
 the title of geologist, and the current of geological thought 
 at that time had been largely influenced by the contest. 
 
 The Huttonians, who adhered to the principles laid down 
 by their great founder, maintained, as their fundamental 
 doctrine, that the past history of our planet is to be ex- 
 plained by what we can learn of the economy of nature at 
 the present time. Unlike the cosmogonists, they did not 
 trouble themselves with what was the first condition of the 
 earth, nor try to trace every subsequent phase of its history. 
 
 VOL. I. G 
 
98 SIR RODERICK MURCHISON. 
 
 They held that the geological record does not go back to the 
 beginning, and that therefore any attempt to trace that be- 
 ginning from geological evidence was vain. Most strongly, 
 too, did they protest against the introduction of causes which 
 could not be shown to be a part of the present economy. 
 They never wearied of insisting, that to the every- day work- 
 ings of Air, Earth, and Sea must be our appeal for an expla- 
 nation of the older revolutions of the globe. The fall of rain, 
 the flow of rivers, the dash of waves, the slowly- crumbling 
 decay of mountain, valley, and shore, were one by one sum- 
 moned as witnesses to bear testimony to the manner in 
 which the most stupendous geological changes are slowly 
 and silently brought about. The waste of the land, which 
 they traced everywhere, was found to give birth to soil 
 renovation of the surface thus springing Phcenix-like out of 
 its decay. In the descent of water from the clouds to the 
 mountains, and from the mountains to the sea, they recog- 
 nised the power by which valleys are carved out of the 
 land, and by which also the materials worn from the land 
 are carried out to the sea, there to be gathered into solid 
 stone the framework of new continents. In the rocks of 
 the hills and valleys they recognised abundantly the traces 
 of old sea-bottoms. They stoutly maintained that these old 
 sea-bottoms had been raised up into dry land from time to 
 time by the powerful action of the same internal heat to 
 which volcanoes owe their birth, and they pointed to the 
 way in which granite and other crystalline rocks occur as 
 convincing evidence of the extent to which the solid earth 
 had been altered and upheaved by the action of these sub- 
 terranean fires. 
 
 That a theory in many respects so bold and original, and 
 

 ..TAJIKS 1IUTTON, M.D. 
 
 From nil Original Portm.it (<// ,Si/' //<//, Umlmi'ii, in the possession nf 
 Sir Georgi HV/vi ndi /-, Bart. 
 
HUTTONIAN AND WERNERIAN WARFARE. 99 
 
 embracing so wide a view of the whole field of inorganic 
 nature, should be imperfect ; that the full meaning of parts of 
 it should not even have been suspected by its founder ; that 
 some of its details should have been built upon erroneous ob- 
 servations or deductions, may be readily believed. The most 
 obvious imperfection about the theory was, that it took no 
 account of the fossil remains of plants and animals. Hence it 
 ignored the long succession of life upon the earth, which those 
 remains have since made known, as well as the evidence 
 thereby obtainable as to the nature and order of physical 
 changes, such as alternations of land and sea, revolutions of 
 climate, and such-like. But though the discovery of these 
 profoundly significant truths opened up a world of research 
 of which neither Hutton nor his friends had ever dreamed, 
 it did not overturn what he had done. He had laid down 
 principles which, in so far as they went, were true, and 
 which the experience of successive generations has amply 
 illustrated and confirmed. He had traced a bold outline 
 which has been gradually filled in, but his master lines are 
 traceable still. The whole of modern geology bears witness 
 to the influence of the Huttonian school 
 
 It was while views of this broad and suggestive nature 
 were making way in this country, that others of a very differ- 
 ent stamp came over from Germany. Werner at that time 
 was teaching mineralogy at Freiberg, but he aspired to con- 
 nect his science with a wide subject, and from the study of 
 minerals to rise to the origin of the globe itself. He had 
 not travelled. He had seen only a small corner of Europe, 
 and having satisfied himself of the order and history of the 
 rocks in that limited district, he proceeded to account for 
 the formation of the various rocks of the rest of the globe 
 
100 SIR RODERICK MURCHISON. 
 
 on the model of his own little kingdom. Instead of starting 
 from what can be seen and known as to nature's operations 
 at the present time, Werner, like other cosmogonists, con- 
 ceived himself bound to begin at the beginning. He sup- 
 posed that the earth had been originally covered with the 
 ocean, in which the materials of the minerals were dissolved. 
 Out of this ocean he conceived that the various rocks were 
 precipitated in the same order in which he found those of 
 Saxony to lie ; hence, on the retirement of the ocean, certain 
 universal formations spread over all the globe, and assumed 
 at the surface various irregular shapes as they consolidated. 
 
 Werner was a good mineralogist, and, as he classed rocks 
 by their mineral characters, there was a certain neatness 
 and precision about his system, and a facility of applying it 
 in other countries, such as no previous cosmological theory 
 could boast. Moreover, as men were mineralogists before 
 geology came into existence, and as the general mineralogical 
 bias still prevailed, the doctrines of Werner, so largely based 
 on mineralogical considerations, had a great advantage in 
 the readiness with which they might be expected to be 
 adopted. But, besides this, although his views about uni- 
 versal formations and the aqueous origin of all rocks even 
 of basalt were quite erroneous, he had grasped part of a 
 great truth in his chronological grouping of strata. He 
 had likewise noticed, as indeed had been already to some 
 extent recognised by observers both in France and Germany, 
 that the remains of plants and animals imbedded in the 
 strata became fewer in number, and more unlike living 
 forms, the older the rocks in which they occur. Even, 
 therefore, had he not been so full of zeal and eloquence as 
 to inspire his pupils with enthusiasm, his views would pro- 
 
PROFESSOR JAMESON. 101 
 
 bably have made a way for themselves in Europe. But his 
 ardour kindled a like spirit in those who came to listen to 
 him. They returned to their own homes eager to apply, 
 even in the most distant corners of the globe, the system 
 which had been made so clear to them at Freiberg. They 
 had at heart not only the cause of truth, but the fame of an 
 eloquent teacher and friend, so that their course, at least in 
 this country, became a kind of propagandism. 
 
 It is hardly possible now to realize how fierce and per- 
 sonal was the Huttonian and Wernerian war. Hutton him- 
 self had lived and died in Edinburgh. The crags and ravines 
 of that romantic town had inspired him with some of his 
 views, and, after he had gone, these features remained as 
 memorials of his teaching, to friends who loved and followers 
 who revered him. Edinburgh was naturally therefore the 
 home of the Huttonian theory. It so happened, however, that 
 in the year 1804 the Professorship of Natural History was 
 given to Robert Jameson, a student from Freiberg, full of 
 the true Wernerian ardour. He was not long in office before 
 he began to gather round him a band of disciples ; and thus 
 Edinburgh became a chief focus of the geological war. 1 
 
 Amid the turmoil of the contest one figure still stands 
 out prominently, calm and gentle, full of the courtesy of the 
 days of chivalry, fighting not for self nor for fame, but 
 generously setting lance in rest for the cause of truth, and 
 on behalf of a revered teacher and friend formidable in 
 the lists withal, well skilled in defence, and with keen eye 
 and ready hand to mark the weak points in his adversary's 
 
 1 Among recently published reminiscences of this time, reference may 
 be made to Sir Henry Holland's interesting allusions to the fierceness of 
 the contest in Edinburgh. See his Recollections of Past Life, p. 81. 
 
102 SIR RODERICK MURCHISON. 
 
 armour. Such was the illustrious Playfair a man to whom 
 geologists owe a debt of gratitude which has perhaps never 
 yet been adequately paid. Hutton had passed away, his 
 work unfinished, and the style of his writings so obscure as 
 to set a barrier to the general diffusion which their genius 
 merited. Playfair, who was his warm personal friend, de- 
 termined to prevent the risk of such doctrines as those of 
 Hutton sinking into neglect, and to that end composed, 
 and, in the spring of 1802, published his Illustrations of the 
 Huttonian Theory. 
 
 This great work may be taken as the text-book of the 
 Huttonian school. It contains not only the views taught 
 by Hutton himself, but the expansion and application of 
 them by Playfair. Gifted with an eloquence which, for 
 dignity, precision, and elegance, reminds us of some of the 
 best old French models, and which has certainly never since 
 been equalled in the geological literature of this country, 
 Playfair not only gained for the doctrines of his master a 
 publicity and measure of acceptance which they might not 
 otherwise have attained, but he raised geology out of the 
 region of mere wild speculation, and placed it in an honour- 
 able position among the inductive sciences. The real rise of 
 geology in this country into the dignity of a science, is 
 traceable mainly to the influence of the Illustrations of the 
 Huttonian Theory* 
 
 But in the earlier years of the century this was not re- 
 
 1 This was acknowledged six-and-twenty years after the Illustrations 
 had appeared, and when their author had gone over to the majority. A 
 warm and graceful tribute to his influence, with a frank recognition of 
 the obligations of geologists to his labours in their service, was then given 
 by Dr. Fitton in his Presidential Address to the Geological Society of 
 London. Proc. Oeol. Soc. i. 56 (15th February 1828). 
 
FOUNDATION OF GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 103 
 
 cognised. The very principles of geology were still matter 
 of discussion. These would doubtless have been sooner 
 settled but for the baneful influence of Wernerianism, and 
 the check given by that system to the development of the 
 views of Hutton and Playfair. Still it must in fairness be 
 acknowledged, that "Wernerianism introduced a more precise 
 mineralogy and petrography than had ever been known be- 
 fore, and that though this was at the best but a poor sub- 
 stitute for the earlier growth of sound geology, it was an 
 advantage, the loss of which, when it died out with that 
 system, has in one not unimportant branch crippled British 
 geology ever since. 
 
 In the midst of this ferment of conflicting theories, a few 
 men interested in inquiries as to the nature and origin of 
 minerals and rocks, drew together in London in the year 
 1807, and formed themselves into the Geological Society. 
 A further reference to this important event will be made in 
 the next Chapter, when we come to the time when Murchison 
 joined the Society. In the meantime we may note that the 
 aim of the founders was to gather facts as to the composition 
 and structure of the earth without reference to questions of 
 theory. With this view they met at short intervals to read 
 papers on the rocks or minerals of particular species, or of 
 special districts, and every few years gathered the more im- 
 portant of these papers into a large quarto volume of Trans- 
 actions. During the early days of its existence the Society 
 devoted itself with praiseworthy diligence to questions of 
 mineralogy, or of the geological structure of different loca- 
 lities. The members hardly ever meddled with the remains 
 of the plants and animals imbedded in the rocks. That these 
 remains had a deep meaning, that they were to furnish the 
 
104 SIR RODERICK MURCHISON. 
 
 key which would make it easy to group the rocks of Eng- 
 land in their order of formation, and that they contained the 
 records of a marvellous march of life upon the earth, had not 
 yet dawned upon the minds of any of these early pioneers. 
 
 While the acknowledged leaders of the infant science of 
 geology were on the one hand wrangling as to the principles 
 to be adopted, and, on the other hand, busying themselves 
 with the collection and discussion of details of no great 
 moment, a man had been quietly and unobserved at work 
 for long years among the rocks of England, and had learned 
 their secret as none else had done. Born in Oxfordshire, 
 William Smith had been used in childhood to collect and 
 wonder over the fossils so abundant round his birthplace. 
 In later years, trained to the profession of civil engineer 
 and land-surveyor, he had recognised his early playthings in 
 far distant parts of the country. Step by step he was led to 
 perceive, in a far more precise and accurate way than had 
 been thought of by Werner or any previous observer, that 
 each group of strata had its own characteristic fossils. By 
 this test he could recognise a series of rocks all the way from 
 the coasts of Dorset to those of Yorkshire. He surprised 
 some of his friends who had made collections of fossils 
 by telling them from what special set of rocks each series 
 of shells had been obtained. He constructed, and as far 
 back as 1799 began to publish, geological maps of various 
 parts of England, on which the different groups of rocks 
 which he had made up were delineated with singular accu- 
 racy. At agricultural meetings, and to any inquirer who 
 wished to see them, he exhibited these maps, showing more 
 particularly their value in questions of farming and water- 
 supply. He had tried to find patrons, with whose help he 
 
DISCOVERIES OF WILLIAM SMITH. 105 
 
 might publish a general work, and even issued prospectuses 
 of his proposal, but failed to succeed, until at last, in the 
 year 1815, he gave to the world his " Map of the Strata of 
 England and Wales." But long before the appearance of this 
 map, and of the other works which he issued in succession, 
 his ideas had spread widely through the country. Hence 
 when these marvellous productions were published, they met 
 with immediate acceptance. They completely revolutionized 
 the geology of the day, and called forth from his contem- 
 poraries the most unqualified praise, and the well-merited 
 title of the Father of English Geology. It was now possible 
 to arrange the rocks of the country in definite chronological 
 order, to compare those of one district with those of another, 
 to trace the connexion of the varying character of the strata 
 underneath with the change of soils and the rise of springs. 
 But, above all, William Smith's discoveries led the way to 
 all that has since been done in tracing back the history of 
 Life into the dim past. He was not himself a naturalist, 
 but he laid that sure foundation on which our knowledge is 
 built of the grand succession of living beings upon the 
 surface of our planet. 
 
 From the prodigious impetus given by these revelations 
 Geology made a new start in England, and branched out 
 especially in two directions, which have continued up to the 
 present time to be the paths chiefly followed by geologists in 
 this country. In the first place, what is called Stratigraphical 
 geology, that is, the accurate grouping of the rocks according 
 to their order of formation, took its rise from the work of 
 William Smith. Before his day no means existed of making 
 any such subdivision beyond the vague general distinctions 
 implied in such terms as Primary, Transition, and Secondary. 
 
106 SIR RODERICK MURCHISON. 
 
 In the second place, from the attention now given to fossils 
 as a key to the discrimination of rocks, the science of Palaeon- 
 tology, or the study of ancient forms of life, first took root 
 in England. It is true that the researches of Cuvier among 
 the extinct mammals of the Paris basin, and his clear and 
 eloquent writings, as well as the labours of Brongniart, had 
 drawn the eyes of the world to the interest attaching to 
 fossil remains. These discoveries undoubtedly laid the foun- 
 dations of Palseontology. They were not made, however, 
 until after Smith's views, unpublished indeed, but freely 
 communicated, had begun to spread in this country, and 
 until consequently the minds of geologists were in some 
 degree prepared for them by learning that a new meaning 
 and value had begun to be discernible in the remains of the 
 plants and animals imbedded in the rocks. 
 
 At the same time that this new development of geological 
 inquiry took place, certain other changes came about in 
 England. Foremost among these was the decay of Minera- 
 logy and Petrography, or Mineral ogical geology. Men found 
 such a great untrodden field opening out before them, that 
 they forsook the old and well-beaten paths of mineralogy. 
 Neglecting the study of minerals, they left off also that of 
 the mineralogical composition of rocks. For somewhere 
 about half a century these branches of geology remained 
 scarcely cultivated at all in this country, and only within 
 the last few years have some of our geologists wakened up 
 to the fact, that in this department of their science they 
 have been far outstripped by their brethren of the hammer 
 in Germany and in France. 
 
 So strongly did the tide now set in towards stratigraphical 
 and palseontological pursuits, that another not less important 
 
SIR JAMES HALL AND HIS WORK. 107 
 
 branch of geological research, which had been begun with 
 much promise, fell into neglect the application of physical 
 experiment to the elucidation of geological problems. The 
 merit of having started this line of investigation belongs to 
 the Huttonian school. Among Hutton's friends and ad- 
 mirers was Sir James Hall of Dunglass a man of singular 
 shrewdness, with a strong bent towards putting things to 
 the test of experiment, and an inventive faculty of no com- 
 mon order. He had urged Hutton to apply this test to 
 ^ome of his views which had been most keenly controverted. 
 That philosopher, however, had a deep conviction that as 
 we could never hope to imitate the scale of nature's opera- 
 tions, so we might run a great risk of having false impres- 
 sions given to our minds by such experiments. He seems 
 to have had a kind of contempt for those who "judge of the 
 great operations of the mineral kingdom from having kindled 
 a fire and looked into the bottom of a little crucible." 1 
 
 Hall, though, from deference to his master, he generously 
 refrained from putting his ideas into practice during the 
 lifetime of the latter, felt sure that some parts of the Hut- 
 tonian Theory could be proved or disproved by simple ex- 
 periments. 2 After Hutton's death a series of trials, memor- 
 able as the birth of Experimental Geology, proved the truth 
 of his surmise, adding, at the same time, to the stability 
 of Hutton's views and the fame of the Scottish School of 
 Geology. During the first quarter of this century he pub- 
 lished at intervals a series of admirable papers in the Trans- 
 actions of the Eoyal Society of Edinburgh on such questions 
 as the igneous origin of basalt-rocks, the formation of marble 
 
 1 Theory of the Earth, vol. i. p. 251. 
 
 2 Transactions of the Royal Society, Edinburgh, vol. vi. p. 76. 
 
108 SIR RODERICK MURCH1SON. 
 
 and crystalline limestone, the contortion of the earth's crust, 
 etc. But the vitality of the geological school in that capital 
 was gone. No one followed up the path opened by Hall, 
 and men were too busy elsewhere in making out the order 
 of the rocks and the succession of the fossils to have time 
 or inclination for theoretical questions. 
 
 Another change of import in the history of the time 
 succeeding the publications of William Smith, was the 
 gradual decline and extinction of Wernerianism. Even at 
 its stronghold in Edinburgh it had been waning. Two 
 months after the founding of the Geological Society of 
 London, Jameson had started the Wernerian Society in 
 Edinburgh a Society which continued for many years, in 
 spite of its name, to do much excellent work in various 
 departments of natural history. Its founder had come to 
 be regarded as the avowed leader of the Wernerians of this 
 country. He had one great advantage over his opponents. 
 Accurate mineralogical knowledge enabled him to discri- 
 minate rocks with a precision to which they could make no 
 pretension, and although this was an accomplishment of 
 little real moment in the theoretical questions chiefly in 
 dispute, he did not fail to make the most of it, nor they to 
 betray their consciousness of their inferiority in that respect. 
 In the end, however, Jameson and his band of co-believers 
 in Werner came to be gradually isolated on the rocks of 
 Edinburgh with an ever-rising flood of the dominant geology 
 around them. There they stood, battling as well as they 
 might with the inevitable, until at last Jameson frankly 
 acknowledged, at one of the evening discussions of the Royal 
 Society, that Wernerianism was doomed and deserved to die. 1 
 
 1 This incident, of Jameson's confession, was told to the writer by Sir 
 

 PROFES.SOi; HoliKIiT JAMESON. 
 
 t .UY/u'i'/K/v iii tin' iivtsi.xxiuit i. if Ll r. Cltnul M tiii'lmnJ, KJluliliyli. 
 
VOLCANIC GEOLOGY. 109 
 
 It had been one of the characteristics of Werner's system 
 to ignore, or at least to neglect, volcanoes and volcanic action. 
 There were no volcanoes in that little kingdom which he 
 had taken as the model of the globe. The neglect was par- 
 donable perhaps in his case, but when his votaries in travel- 
 ling over the world met face to face with only too manifest 
 proofs of the vitality of the internal heat of the earth, they 
 had recourse to every possible explanation the combustion 
 of subterranean beds of coal, or indeed any supposition that 
 would depreciate the importance of volcanoes as parts of the 
 general economy of the world. They almost seemed to 
 regard volcanoes with dislike as anomalous interferences with 
 the normal constitution of things. They denied the igneous 
 origin of such rocks as basalt, even though their opponents 
 proved that rocks of precisely similar character had often 
 been seen flowing in a melted state down the sides of volcanoes. 
 Excellent service had been done in exposing the absurdity of 
 these notions by Desmarest, Montlosier, Faujas St. Fond, 
 and other geologists on the Continent, and in this country 
 by Macculloch, Boue*, and others, but by none more signally 
 than by Mr. Poulett Scrope in his admirable memoirs on the 
 volcanic districts of Naples and Central France, and his 
 work on Volcanoes. 1 Though the British Islands abound in 
 
 Robert Christison, and by Professor Balfour, who were present at the 
 Royal Society of Edinburgh when it took place. It has not been possible 
 to recover the date of the meeting. 
 
 1 Mr. Scrope, to whose cordial friendship it is a pleasure to record my 
 obligations, has furnished me with the following reminiscence of this early 
 geological controversy : " I well recollect, on a discussion arising at the 
 Geological Society meeting, after the reading of a paper of mine on the 
 Auvergne volcanoes, Greenough's arguing that the cinder-cones might be 
 volcanic, but that the plateaux of basalt that adjoined them were cer- 
 tainly precipitations from the archaic ocean of Werner. In my reply 
 I got the laugh in my favour by putting to him whether, if he found 
 
110 SIR RODERICK MURCHISON. 
 
 old volcanic rocks of many ages, even the stimulus of the 
 success of these observers was not enough to divert a few 
 able observers from the general drift of English geology 
 into the channels already indicated. Another generation 
 had to arise before the volcanic history of Britain began to 
 attract serious notice. 
 
 But of the changes which followed the rise and rapid 
 development of stratigraphical geology and palaeontology in 
 England, perhaps the most regrettable was the neglect of 
 what is now termed Physiographical Geology that is, the 
 study of the origin of the present external features of the 
 land. Hutton and Play fair were full of this subject. They 
 refused to admit of hypothetical revolutions, but steadfastly 
 insisted on explaining the changes of the past by the same 
 kinds of action which may still be seen at work. Never- 
 theless, though they directed attention so forcibly to the 
 every-day changes of the earth's surface, their teaching did 
 not displace the more sensational hypotheses of catastrophe 
 and convulsion. It was reserved for a foreign scientific 
 Society to recall the thoughts of men to the revolutions 
 which the land had undergone within the time of human 
 chronicles, and for the illustrious Von Hoff to gather the 
 historical evidence of these revolutions 1 a task which has 
 since been so worthily followed up and extended by Lyell. 
 
 some morning on entering his library (so well known to geologists 
 through his hospitalities) a stream of ink flooding the carpet, with a 
 broken bottle at one end of it, he would be satisfied with the explana- 
 tion of his housemaid that she had broken the bottle, but was wholly 
 innocent of spilling the ink, which must have been done in some other 
 way and at some other time. Greenough lived and, I believe, died a 
 consistent Wernerian, and many a contest I had with him in 1823-5 on 
 the identical character of basalt and lava." 
 
 1 Geschichte der durch Ueberlieferung nachgewiesenen natiirlichen 
 Veranderungen der Erdoberflache ein Versuch von K. E. A. von Hoff. 
 
ORIGIN OF VALLEYS AND HILLS. Ill 
 
 While dwelling on ordinary and familiar agents of change, 
 the Scottish philosophers found in these the explanation of 
 the origin of much of the scenery of the land. They delighted 
 to trace the origin of valleys, the sculpturing of mountains, 
 and the gradual evolution of the various features of a land- 
 scape. They attributed these irregularities of surface to the 
 action of rain and streams upon masses of land upheaved above 
 the sea ; an idea which was deemed too bold even by many 
 of their boldest followers, such as Hall, and which fell into 
 comparative oblivion. It was noticed in text-books and 
 treatises only to be dismissed as extravagant. In its place the 
 notion prevailed that to subterranean action we must mainly 
 attribute the present inequalities of the land a notion which 
 has been prevalent until within the last few years, when the 
 rising generation of geologists has begun to recognise the true 
 meaning and place of the Huttonian doctrine. We shall find 
 that Sir Roderick Murchison up to the close of his life battled 
 for the supremacy of the underground forces in the modelling 
 of the surface of the land. And yet he had read the lucid 
 observations and arguments of Mr. Poulett Scrope, written 
 so far back as 1822, to prove how valleys in central France 
 had been cut out by running water ; nay, as we shall see, 
 one of his earliest geological tours abroad was to this very 
 region, where he became convinced of the truth of Mr. 
 Scrope's views, though the conversion proved to be only a 
 transient one. 
 
 In fine, the first quarter of the present century was a time 
 of marvellous vigour in the history of geology. It was during 
 
 This work was begun as a prize-essay written in response to an invitation 
 from the Royal Society of Sciences at Gottingen. The first volume was 
 published in 1822. 
 
112 SIR RODERICK MURCHISON. 
 
 that time that the science took shape and dignity. Amid 
 the conflict of opposing schools progress had been steady 
 and rapid. Every year broadened the base on which the 
 infant science was being built up. The rocks of England 
 and Wales were arranged in their order of age, the outlines 
 traced by Smith having been more and more filled in. Ex- 
 cellent service had been done by the admirable handbook of 
 Conybeare and Phillips, while Boue", Jameson, Macculloch, 
 and others, had made known the rocks of large tracts of 
 Scotland. But a vast deal remained to be accomplished. 
 The field was still in a sense newly discovered, it stretched 
 over a wide area, and lay open to any one who with active 
 feet, good eyes, and shrewd head chose to enter it. And 
 the enthusiasm of those who were already at work within 
 its borders sufficed not only to inspirit their own labours, 
 but to attract and stimulate other fellow-workers from the 
 outer world. 
 
 From the foregoing rapid survey of the progress of geology 
 during the first quarter of this century we can see the pro- 
 bable line of inquiry which any young Englishman would 
 then be likely to take who entered upon the pursuit of the 
 science without being gradually led up to it by previous and 
 special studies. In the first place, he would almost certainly 
 be a Huttonian, though doubtless holding some of Button's 
 views with a difference. He would hardly be likely to show 
 much sympathy with the fading dogmas of the Wernerians. 
 
 In the second place, he would probably depart widely 
 from one aspect of the original Huttonian school in avoiding 
 theoretical questions, and sticking, possibly with even too 
 great pertinacity, to the observation and accumulation of 
 facts. 
 
OPENING OF HIS GEOLOGICAL CAREER. 113 
 
 In the third place, he would most likely have no taste 
 for experimental research as elucidating geological questions, 
 and might set little store by the contributions made by 
 physicists to the solution of problems in his science. 
 
 In the fourth place, he would almost certainly be igno- 
 rant of mineralogy, and whenever his work lay among 
 crystalline rocks it would be sure to bear witness to this 
 ignorance. 
 
 In the fifth place, devoting himself to what lies beneath 
 the surface as the true end and aim of geology, he would be 
 apt to neglect the study of the external features of the 
 land. And this neglect might lead him in the end to form 
 most erroneous views as to the origin of these features. 
 
 Lastly, his main geological idea would probably be to 
 make out the order of succession among the rocks of his own 
 country, to collect their fossils, unravel their complicated 
 structure, and gather materials for comparing them with the 
 rocks of other countries. In a word, he would in all likeli- 
 hood drift with the prevailing current of geological inquiry 
 at the time, and become a stratigraphical geologist. 
 
 There was no reason in Murchison's case why these 
 influences of the day should not mould the whole character 
 of his scientific life. We shall trace in the records of later 
 years how thoroughly they did so. As he started, so he 
 continued up to the end, manifesting throughout his career 
 the permanent sway of the circumstances under which he 
 broke ground as a geologist. 
 
 At first the novelty and fascination of the pursuit engaged 
 
 his attention. Many a time on his walking and hunting 
 
 expeditions he had noticed marine shells far inland. He 
 
 now found out that such shells formed, as it were, the 
 
 VOL. I. H 
 
114 SIR RODERICK MURCHISON, 
 
 alphabet of a new language, and that by their means he 
 might decipher for himself the history of the rocks with 
 whose external forms he was so familiar. He threw himself 
 into the study with all his usual ardour, and ere long 
 became as enthusiastic with his hammer over down and 
 shore as he had. been with his pencil and note-book among 
 the galleries of Italy, or with his hunting-whip or his gun 
 across the moors of Durham. 
 
 Of the men on whom the progress of geology mainly 
 depended at the time when Murchison joined them to 
 become their life-long associate and friend, something should 
 be said here. Some of the band of enthusiasts by whom the 
 Geological Society of London was originated still lived, and 
 took an active share in the Society's work. Among them 
 were Greenough, the true founder and first president of the 
 Society amiable, yet shy, and somewhat hesitating in 
 manner, full of all kinds of miscellaneous knowledge, obsti- 
 nately sceptical of new opinions, a kind of staunch geolo- 
 gical Tory, and playing the part of objector-general at the 
 evening discussions ; and Babington, a kindly, bland, and 
 courteous veteran, who, well versed in the mineralogy of his 
 time, had gathered at his house the few like-minded friends 
 from whom the Geological Society sprang, who introduced the 
 practice of discussing the papers read at the meetings, and 
 who even when nearly fourscore years of age found a con- 
 genial occupation in the Society's museum. Other names 
 which had long been associated with the progress of the 
 Society still had an honoured place on its list. Such were 
 those of Wollaston admirable mineralogist, sternly upright 
 in his search for truth, quiet, reserved, serious, looking like a 
 Greek sage, and deservedly regarded as a general arbiter in 
 the scientific world of London, yet, to those who were privi- 
 
VOL. I. 
 
 page ll~>. 
 
 KEY. WILLIAM I). CONVBKAltK, Kits. 
 
 Photograph in //'. possession "jhi* t'untili/. 
 
FOUNDERS OF ENGLISH GEOLOGY. 115 
 
 leged with his more intimate friendship, fond of a joke and 
 of a quiet corner in a pheasant cover, where his gun seldom 
 failed to tell ; Warburton cautious and uncommunicative ; 
 Fitton friendly and painstaking, an active leader in the 
 affairs of the Society, but somewhat hasty in temper, and 
 prone to what some of his colleagues thought "red-tape" 
 formality, yet an admirable observer in the field, a most 
 gifted debater, and one whose clear and elegant pen did good 
 service to the infant science in popular journals, and whose 
 house formed a pleasant centre for the geologists of town ; 
 Conybeare clear-headed, critical, full of quaint humour and 
 wit ; Buckland cheery, humorous, bustling, full of eloquence, 
 with which he too blended much true wit, seldom without his 
 famous blue bag, whence, even at fashionable evening parties, 
 he would bring out and describe with infinite drollery, amid 
 the surprise and laughter of his audience, the last "find" from 
 a bone-cave; Leonard Homer mild, unpretending, and defer- 
 ential, yet shrewd and systematic, a valuable member of the 
 council of management of the Society ; Sedgwick with his 
 well-remembered hard-featured yet noble face, and eyes like 
 an eagle's, manly alike in body and mind, full of enthusiasm, 
 ready and graphic in talk, generous and sympathetic, often 
 depressed by a constitutional tendency to hypochondria, yet, 
 when in full vigour of health, shrinking from no toil, either 
 at home or abroad, in furtherance of his chosen branch of 
 science, and laying up year by year a store of facts and of 
 brilliant deductions from them, which have given him one 
 of the most honoured places in the literature of geology. 
 
 Later in advent than these magnates, or less prominent at 
 the time with which we are now dealing, and therefore more 
 of the standing of Murchison himself, came Lyell (now a house- 
 hold name all over the world), even then noted among his 
 
116 SIR RODERICK MURCHISON. 
 
 fellows for those qualities the further development of which 
 has been of such value to the spread of sound geology, and 
 specially for his earnest pursuit of information on every sub- 
 ject which could throw any light upon the problems of the 
 science ; Henry De la Beche, then a handsome and fashion- 
 able young man, just beginning to show that quick and 
 shrewd observation of nature, and rare power of philosophical 
 induction which eventually gave him so honourable a rank 
 in British geology; Dr. Edward Turner young, open, un- 
 assuming, but eager in quest of knowledge, and one of the 
 first chemists to recognise the necessity of linking chemistry 
 closely with mathematics ; G. Poulett Scrope full of 
 geological zeal, which led him through the chief vol- 
 canic districts of Europe, and stimulated him to produce 
 an early series of writings which the avocations of a subse- 
 quent political life have left all too few ; W. J. Broderip 
 active and methodical, full of varied natural-history know- 
 ledge, brimming with joke, yet taking a keen interest in the 
 affairs of the Society, and keeping them in order, not with the 
 severe rigour of Dr. Fitton, but with an easy good-humoured 
 precision which pleased everybody and did the Society and 
 its members most excellent service. 
 
 Many other names of not less note should receive more 
 than passing mention here among Murchison's early scientific 
 contemporaries. Such were Whewell, Herschel, C. Stokes, 
 Babbage, Webster, Lonsdale, Sir Philip Egerton, the Earl of 
 Enniskillen (then Viscount Cole), and others, most of whom 
 have passed away. Some of these men became intimate 
 personal friends of the subject of this biography, and their 
 names will therefore appear frequently in the subsequent 
 chapters. 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 FIRST YEARS OF SCIENTIFIC LIFE AT HOME. 
 
 WE return to Murchison's career. He had now fairly 
 resolved to cast in his lot with the men of science. Bringing 
 his wife with him from Nursted, he came up to London, and 
 rented the house No. 1 Montague Place, Montague Square. 
 There, settling down to a much more serious employment 
 than any he had yet undertaken, he entered upon his new 
 life full of ardour and hope. 
 
 " If in the last years of my fox-hunting," he says, " I 
 began to sniff up a little scientific knowledge, and showed a 
 willingness to turn my former rambles among the Alps and 
 Apennines to some profit, it was only in the winter of 1824 
 that I buckled resolutely to the study of chemistry and the 
 cognate subjects by attending Brande's early morning lectures 
 at the Eoyal Institution. This I did by the advice of Sir H. 
 Davy as a necessary preliminary. From this moment, all 
 horses except a pair for my wife's carriage being dismissed, 
 I got quite into another and to me an entirely new phase 
 of society. My note-books chiefly refer, however, to the 
 geological lectures, and before the spring came I became 
 
118 SIR RODERICK MURCHISON. [ISM. 
 
 acquainted, through books and lectures, with the chief phe- 
 nomena of British geology. Though chemistry never had 
 strong attractions for me, I kept regular notes of the lectures 
 on its various branches, and, at the end of my course, knew 
 as much about that science as was necessary for a field- 
 geologist." * 
 
 In later years he used to recall with no little pleasure an 
 incident in that course of lectures. One day Dr. Brande did 
 not lecture, and his place was taken by his assistant a 
 pale thin lad, who began with some timidity, but gathering 
 courage as he went on, soon proved himself to be an ad- 
 mirable lecturer, and received from his delighted audience a 
 hearty round of applause. It was Michael Faraday. 2 
 
 From the Eoyal Institution lectures the transition was 
 easy to the papers and debates to be heard in those little 
 rooms in Bedford Street, Covent Garden, where the Geological 
 Society then held its meetings. We have in the preceding 
 chapter noticed the place which the creation of this Society 
 fills in the history of geological science in this country. 
 Some further details of a more personal kind may here be 
 given, partly because the men who started the Society were 
 in great measure still living and active members of it when 
 Murchison joined them, partly because Murchison's own 
 scientific career was closely bound up with the subsequent 
 history of the Society, and partly because the work done by 
 
 1 These notes, which still exist, show a vast deal of diligence, and a 
 very fair amount of knowledge. They seem to have been carefully 
 written out from day to day, and with equal fulness, whether the subject 
 of the lectures was the composition of beef or the properties of oxygen. 
 
 2 In telling this story to the writer only a few months before his death, 
 Murchison said it was Faraday's first lecture. A comparison of dates, 
 however, shows that his memory had been at fault, for Faraday had 
 already gained a reputation as experimenter and original investigator 
 before this time. 
 
1807.] THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 119 
 
 the Society, and its influence upon the progress of the 
 science, have been so great that they claim grateful recog- 
 nition, and deserve adequate record in any work which pro- 
 fesses to sketch, even in outline, the growth of a portion of 
 British geology. 
 
 At the beginning of this century original research in 
 natural science was promoted in London by two Societies, 
 the Eoyal and the Linnean. Next in order of time came 
 the Geological Society, which took its origin, as already 
 mentioned, in 1807, and under the following circum- 
 stances : l 
 
 " Count de Bournon had written an elaborate monograph 
 on carbonate of lime, and, in order to raise funds for its pub- 
 lication, Dr. Babington invited to his house a number of 
 gentlemen distinguished for their zeal in mineralogical 
 knowledge, when a subscription-list was opened, and the 
 necessary sum was collected. Other meetings of the same 
 gentlemen took place for friendly intercourse, and it was 
 then proposed to form a Geological Society. On Novem- 
 ber 13, 1807, a meeting was held at the Freemasons' Tavern, 
 Great Queen Street, at which resolutions were passed formally 
 constituting the Society. Only eleven gentlemen were pre- 
 sent, and their names deserve to be recorded. They were 
 Arthur Aikin, William Allen, F.E.S., William Babington, 
 M.D., F.E.S., Count Bournon, F.RS., H. Davy, Sec.RS.; 
 J. Franck, M.D., G. Bellas Greenough, M.P., F.R.S., E. 
 
 1 This narrative is taken from an account of the Society written by one 
 of its Fellows, Mr. W. S. Mitchell, just previous to its recent change of 
 quarters to Burlington House, and published in The Hour of November 
 5th, 1873. It is the only narrative which has been published of the early 
 struggles of the Society. Compiled from the minute-books of the Society, 
 it presents a reliable account of events which must always have an interest 
 for English geologists. 
 
120 SIR RODERICK MURCHISON. 
 
 Knight, J. Laird, M.D., J. Parkinson, Kichard Phillips. Two 
 other supporters of the scheme, W. H. Pepys and William 
 Phillips, were unavoidably prevented from attending the 
 meeting, but their names were added to the list. The thir- 
 teen names were read out, and these gentlemen constituted 
 themselves the first members of the Geological Society, with 
 the resolution, 'That there be forthwith instituted a Geo- 
 logical Society for the purpose of making geologists acquainted 
 with each other, of stimulating their zeal, of inducing them 
 to adopt one nomenclature, of facilitating the communication 
 of new facts, and of ascertaining what is known in their 
 science, and what remains to be discovered.' 
 
 " The customs of the new association were such that it 
 would now be called a Club rather than a Society. The 
 members were to meet on the first Friday of every month at 
 five o'clock, at the Freemasons' Tavern, for a fifteen shilling 
 dinner. Business was to commence at seven o'clock, and 
 the chairman was to leave the chair at nine." 
 
 After drawing up rules and other initial formalities, in- 
 cluding the election of a Patron (Eight Honourable Charles 
 F. GreviUe, F.R.S.) and a President (G. B. Greenough, M.P., 
 F.RS.), the members, in accordance with one of their laws, 
 set themselves to work in " contributing to the advancement 
 of geological science, more particularly as connected with 
 the mineral history of the earth." Their numbers increased, 
 and among their early adherents they could count even the 
 President of the Eoyal Society, who requested admission into 
 their ranks. Specimens of minerals were presented to them 
 with such liberality that within a year the idea took definite 
 shape of securing some permanent place for the collections 
 and meetings of the Society. Accordingly, in 1809, rooms 
 
HISTORY OF THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 121 
 
 were obtained at No. 4 Garden Court, Temple, and there the 
 infant Society was enabled first to erect its household gods. 
 But this step, so indicative of independence and activity, 
 soon led to serious troubles. 
 
 " The Society reckoned among its members many who 
 were Fellows of the Eoyal Society, and so long as it aimed 
 at nothing more than dining once a month and discussing 
 geological subjects, there was nothing to which the Fellows 
 of the Eoyal Society could raise any objection. But as soon 
 as a separate habitation was proposed, with a separate collec- 
 tion of specimens, it was at once objected that the dignity of 
 the Eoyal Society would be impaired. At the meeting on 
 March 3 (1809), Sir Joseph Banks sent in his resignation, 
 and soon after a proposal was made by the Patron, the Eight 
 Hon. Charles Greville, to make the Geological Society an 
 assistant association to the Eoyal Society. The drift of the 
 plan was, that the Geological Society should consist of two 
 classes of members (1.) those who were Fellows of the 
 Eoyal Society, and (2.) those who were not. That all papers 
 should be sent to the Eoyal Society for them to select what 
 they liked for publication, and that the Geological Society 
 should be at liberty to publish the rejected papers if they 
 wished. A special meeting to consider this proposal was 
 held at the Freemasons' Tavern on March 10, when this 
 resolution was passed : ' That any proposition tending to 
 render this Society dependent upon or subservient to any 
 other Society does not correspond with the conception this 
 meeting entertains of the original principles upon which the 
 Geological Society was founded.' The proposal was decided 
 to be inadmissible, and it was pointed out that it was never 
 intended to impose any obligations on members of. the Geo- 
 
122 SIR RODERICK MURCHISON. 
 
 logical Society inconsistent with their allegiance to the Eoyal 
 Society. Mr. Greville sent in his resignation as Patron, but 
 the firmness shown by a few of the promoters of the Society 
 secured for it freedom and independence of action." 
 
 This vigorous action no doubt helped to strengthen the 
 Society both in numbers and in influence. Even so early as 
 1810 the first habitation at the Temple was found too small, 
 and the chattels of the Society were in that year transferred 
 to No. 3 Lincoln's Inn Fields. Further evidence of vigour 
 was shown by the fact that the papers read at the meetings 
 began in 1811 to be published in quarto volumes of the 
 massive orthodox size, and with wealth of margin and illus- 
 trations. After six years of great activity, the need for 
 further space again became urgent. Another migration 
 took place, the rooms selected being at No. 20 Bedford Street, 
 Covent Garden. For twelve years, that is from 1816 to 
 1828, the Society continued to hold its meetings in that 
 building. It was while there that "in 1825 a Charter of 
 Incorporation was applied for and obtained from George iv., 
 the date of affixing the royal seal being April 23, ' in the 
 sixth year of our reign.' The five members named in the 
 charter were, W. Buckland, Arthur Aikin, John Bostock, 
 G. Bellas Greenough, and Henry Warburton. Dr. Buckland 
 was by the charter appointed first President." 
 
 The Geological Society of London " was, in its early days," 
 to quote the words of one of its former most distinguished 
 members, " composed of robust, joyous, and independent 
 spirits, who toiled well in the field, and did battle and cuffed 
 opinions with much spirit and great good will ; for they had 
 one great object before them the promotion of true know- 
 ledge and not one of them was deeply committed to any 
 
1824-5.] JOINS THE GEOLOGISTS. 123 
 
 system of opinions." The same writer boasts of " the joyous 
 meetings, and of the generous, unselfish, and truth-loving 
 spirit that glowed throughout the whole body." l 
 
 It was into this pleasant gathering of enthusiasts that 
 Murchison found his way in the winter of 1824-25. "I 
 entered the Society," he says, " Professor Buckland of Oxford 
 being President, and on the 7th of January took my seat, 
 and had my hand shaken by that remarkable man, who was 
 then giving such an impulse to our new science, and was of 
 course my idol. One of the honorary secretaries, then a 
 young lawyer, was Charles Lyell, who then read his first 
 paper, on the marl-lake at Kinnordy, in Forfarshire, the 
 property of his father. 
 
 " Among my scientific friends I was of course most proud 
 to reckon Dr. Wollaston, who then and in subsequent years 
 invariably took pains to make me understand the true 
 method of searching after new facts, and often corrected my 
 slips and mistakes. 
 
 " I also owed great obligation to Mr. Thomas Webster. 
 His acquaintance with minerals and ores, as well as with fossil 
 animal remains, and his well-composed descriptions, were 
 strikingly illustrated by his great powers as an artist. Born 
 in the Shetland Isles, and there receiving a good education, 
 Webster had never seen in that region a tree higher than a 
 bush, so that in coming southwards, as he told me, he never 
 could forget the astonishment and admiration he felt, when 
 on reaching the valley of Berriedale, on the borders of Suther- 
 land, he for the first time saw true forest-trees. Before these he 
 kneeled down, as true a worshipper as Linnaeus when he first 
 beheld in England the yellow blossom of our common furze. 
 
 1 Sedgwick, Brit. Pal. Fossils, Introduction, pp. xc. xcii. 
 
124 SIR RODERICK MURCHISON. [i824 5. 
 
 " Sedgwick, Whewell, Peacock, Babbage, Herschel, and 
 all the eminent Cantabs of the time, came flocking in con- 
 tinually to our scientific assemblies. From his buoyant and 
 cheerful nature, as well as from his flow of soul and elo- 
 quence, Sedgwick at once won my heart, and a year only 
 was destined to elapse before we became coadjutors in a 
 survey of the Highlands, and afterwards of various parts of 
 the Continent." 
 
 To show further the contrast between his employments 
 in London and his amusements during previous winters in 
 the country, it may be well to note that he not merely made 
 a good many acquaintances among scientific people, but be- 
 came a personal friend of not a few men who then or after- 
 wards stood in the foremost ranks of literature. He met 
 Thomas Moore, Hallam, Copley (Lord Lyndhurst), Lord 
 Dudley, and others, who used to frequent the soire'es of Miss 
 Lydia White, whose well-known ambition it was to gather 
 round her the intellect and taste of London society. 1 
 
 With lectures on science, scientific papers and discus- 
 sions, evening soirees, and the opportunity of hearing and 
 talking to men who had already made themselves famous, 
 he found enough fully to fill up his time, and to make Lon- 
 don 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 before 
 he longed to be off into the field to observe for himself. 
 
 " My first real field work," he says, " began under Pro- 
 
 1 Sir Walter Scott, who knew this lady well, describes her as " what 
 Oxonians call a lioness of the first order, with stockings nineteen times 
 nine dyed blue, very lively, very good-humoured, and extremely absurd." 
 Life, vol. ii. p. 137. 
 
1824-5.] FIRST FIELD DAYS WITH BUCKLAND. 125 
 
 fessor 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 Ox- 
 ford coach, I learned a world of things before we reached the 
 Isis, and, amongst others, his 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 one 
 only rickety chair not covered with some fossils, and clean- 
 ing out a fossil bone from the matrix." 
 
 The few days at Oxford were memorably pleasant. Buck- 
 land's wit and enthusiasm glowed through all his scientific 
 sayings and doings, and he had a rare power of description 
 by which he could make even a dry enough subject fascinat- 
 ingly 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 recognise the 
 broader features of the succession of the oolitic rocks of Eng- 
 land up to the far range of the Chalk Hills ; and this not in 
 a dull, text-book fashion, for Buckland, in luminous language, 
 
126 STR RODERICK MURCHISON. [isa4-& 
 
 brought the several elements of the landscape into connexion 
 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 land- 
 scape 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. While shooting and rambling, as he had so 
 often done, at the house of his father-in-law, he had already 
 noted many geological facts in the district around Peters field 
 without paying much heed to them, or seeking in any way 
 for their explanation; but from what he had learnt from 
 Mr. Webster and Dr. Fitton as to the Isle of Wight, he could 
 see that in that island he should most likely find materials 
 for understanding the geology of Petersfield. Accordingly he 
 determined that this should be his first essay in independent 
 field-work. Of this time he writes : " I was totus in illis, 
 and making every preparation for a thorough survey of all 
 the South coast a project which was gladly backed up by 
 my wife, who now saw that I was fairly bitten with my 
 new hobby. Conybeare and Phillips' Geology of England and 
 Wales had then become my scientific bible, and I saw that a 
 fine field was opening for any zealous and active searcher 
 after truth in completing many gaps which they had left to 
 be filled up." 
 
1825.] HIS FIRST INDEPENDENT FIELD-WORK. 127 
 
 The summer of 1825 brought Murchison and his wife 
 back once more to Nursted House, but the Hambledon fox- 
 hounds had now lost their charms for him. With the same 
 zeal he had thrown himself into another kind of hunting, in 
 which, instead of old Parson Eichards and his friends, he 
 had for companion his own wife. Many a deep lane and 
 rocky dingle did they explore together for fossils. Dr. Fitton 
 came down to visit them and joined in the pursuit, tracing 
 out by degrees the well-marked succession of cretaceous 
 strata shown in that district. 
 
 Seeing in this way the problems which he had to work 
 out in the Petersfield district, 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 hus- 
 band would push on to make some long and laborious detour. 
 In this way, while she remained quietly working at Lynie 
 Eegis, 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 recognised 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 
 
128 SIR RODERICK MURCHISON. [im. 
 
 in later years. William Lonsdale had served in the Penin- 
 sular 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 specially 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 extre- 
 mity of Sussex, and the adjoining parts of Hants and Surrey." 1 
 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 
 an 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." 
 
 1 See Oeol. Trans., 2d ser., vol. ii. p. 97. 
 
VOL. 1 
 
 >age 1 ::>. 
 
 WILLIAM HVUE WOLLASTOX, M.I>. 
 
 Frum (t iJrun-imj hi/ Sir Tltonia* Lan-i-en 
 
1826.] ENTERS THE ROYAL SOCIETY. 129 
 
 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 inde- 
 pendent gentleman having a taste for science, with plenty of 
 time and enough of money to gratify it. His acquaintance 
 with the scientific men of London daily increased, Davy and 
 Wollaston being specially attentive in their encouragement. 
 Of his intercourse with the latter he writes : " Wollaston's 
 little dinners of four or five persons were most agreeable, 
 and you were sure to come away with much fresh know- 
 ledge. A good dish of fish, a capital joint and some game, 
 followed by his invariable large pudding, filled in with 
 apples, apricots, or green-gages, all served on plain white 
 porcelain by two tidy, handsome women, was the bill of 
 fare. 
 
 " This was perhaps about the happiest period of my life. 
 I had shaken off the vanities of the fashionable world to 
 a good extent was less anxious to know titled folks and 
 leading sportsmen was free of all the cares and expenses of 
 a stable full of horses and had taken to a career in which 
 excitement in the field carried with it occupation, amuse- 
 ment, and possibly reputation." 
 
 But if distinction was to be won in this new kind of 
 activity, it could only be by hard toil in the field. He had 
 never had any of the special training which would have fitted 
 him for working out geological problems indoors, such as the 
 discrimination of fossils, or the characters and alterations of 
 minerals and rocks ; hence, although stress of weather, not to 
 speak of the pleasures of society, brought him to London and 
 
 VOL. I. I 
 
130 SIR RODERICK MURCHISON. [im. 
 
 kept him there during the winter and spring, he soon saw 
 that to insure progress in his adopted pursuit he must spend 
 as much as possible of every summer and autumn in original 
 field-exploration. He had begun well in this way by the tour 
 along the South coast. Now that another summer had come 
 round he prepared to resume his hammer in the field. As 
 before, a definite task was given to him. Buckland and 
 others advised him to go north and settle the geological age 
 of the Brora coal-field, 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 northward. 
 
 At York he made the acquaintance of two men with 
 whom he was destined in after life to have much close inter- 
 course and co-operation, the Eev. William Vernon (after- 
 wards Vernon Harcourt) and Mr. John Phillips. The latter 
 friend has kindly contributed the following reminiscences 
 of this interview : " In a bright afternoon of early summer, 
 while engaged in museum arrangements, a man of cheerful 
 and distinguished aspect was presented to me by the Pre- 
 
1826.] WILLIAM SMITH AND JOHN PHILLIPS. 131 
 
 sident of the Yorkshire Philosophical Society, Mr. W. 
 Yernon (Harcourt), as Mr. Murchison, a friend of Buck- 
 land, desirous of consulting our collections. The museum 
 was tolerably well supplied with oolitic fossils, and espe- 
 cially those of the coralline oolite and calcareous grit of 
 Yorkshire. Some of these were amusing enough. A 
 diligent collector at Malton, who supplied the museum 
 with specimens, sometimes brought what were called 
 ' beetles,' made by painting and varnishing parts of shells 
 and crustaceans. After examining the ' fossils' with care, 
 Murchison would see these 'curiosities.' As it happened, 
 they were laid contemptuously at the base of vertical cases, 
 and were rather difficult to get out ' Never mind,' said 
 the old soldier, 'we will lie down and reconnoitre on the 
 floor/ I knew then that geology had gained a resolute 
 disciple, possibly a master-workman." 
 
 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 me strongly to his 
 uncle, William Smith, who was then living at Scarborough, 
 and had little intercourse with the Geological Society, for 
 he thought that Greenough and others, in taking from him 
 the main materials of his original Geological Map of Eng- 
 land, had done hirn an injustice. The unpretending country 
 land-surveyor, who had really the highest merit of them all, 
 had been somewhat snubbed by such men as Dr. Macculloch 
 and others, who, having a superior acquaintance with the 
 chemical composition of rocks and minerals, did not appre- 
 ciate the broad views of Smith. 
 
 " From the moment I had my first walk with William 
 Smith (then about sixty years old), I felt that he was just 
 
132 8IE RODERICK MURCHISON. [ISM. 
 
 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 Eobin 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 oolitic limestones 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 stoutly 
 with me all under the cliffs, from Eobin 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 some- 
 thing 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 
 
1826.] TOUR IN THE HIGHLANDS. 133 
 
 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 note-book with observa- 
 tions and queries about granite, red sandstone, limestone, 
 and other puzzling matters, on which his previous expe- 
 rience in field-work in the south of England and in York- 
 shire 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. 
 
 Sailing packets, small boats, and post-horses combined 
 to make a tour among the Inner Hebrides and West High- 
 lands in those days a leisurely affair. A geologist had many 
 opportunities of using his hammer by the way, and Murchison 
 seems always to have had his in his hand or in his pocket, 
 and to have jotted down in detail what he saw. The itinerary 
 of his journey shows that he scoured the hills and glens of 
 Mull, peeped into every nook and cranny of Staffa, mounted 
 to the top of Ben Nevis and recognised its curious crest of 
 porphyry, went up to the Parallel Eoads of Glen Eoy, as- 
 cended the Great Glen, and then turning west through 
 Glengarry to Glenshiel, found himself in Skye. In that 
 wildest and weirdest of the Western Islands he and his wife 
 did excellent work in collecting fossils, and thereby obtain- 
 ing 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 Murchisonice) was 
 
134 SIR RODERICK MURCHISON. [isze. 
 
 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 High- 
 land 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 a 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 recognised in them the 
 equivalents of parts of the oolitic 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. As in Skye, he made a collection of 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 
 
1826-7.] THE THAMES TUNNEL. 135 
 
 length the tourists had to prepare for a southward migration 
 again. Beaching Inverness, they turned eastward to Aber- 
 deen, and thence, with Boue's Essai in hand, down the eastern 
 coast, by Peterhead, Bullers of Buchan, Arbroath, and St. 
 Andrews. While in Fife they received tidings of the serious 
 illness of the old General at Nursted. Abruptly closing this 
 protracted ramble, they took their places in the mail-coach, 
 and travelled without intermission into Hants. The imme- 
 diate result of this summer's work was seen in the prepara- 
 tion of a paper for the Geological Society. 1 
 
 As before, the winter was passed in London, and this 
 became henceforth Murchison's practice. The summer and 
 autumn usually found him in the country for fresh observa- 
 tions, with visits to old friends and a renewal of field-sports ; 
 but when winter began to set in, unless when abroad, he 
 made his way back to town to renew the socialities of life, 
 in which he delighted, and to elaborate his geological work 
 for publication. 
 
 Among the incidents of London life in the winter of 
 1826-27, he has preserved some notes of a hazardous de- 
 scent into the Thames Tunnel, then in course of construc- 
 tion. The river had burst in upon the works, and the two 
 Brunels were organizing means for expelling the intruder. 
 Considerable discussion went on in scientific circles as to 
 the mode of procedure, or whether it was worth proceeding 
 at all. Dr. Buckland organized a party to go down and 
 
 1 " On the Coal-field of Brora, iu Sutherlandshire, and some other 
 stratified deposits in the north of Scotland" (Trans. Geol. Soc., 2d series, 
 vol. ii. p. 293), an excellent memoir, in which the principles of William 
 Smith were, for the first time, applied in detail to the oolitic rocks of 
 Scotland, and which gave the first connected account of these rocks, with 
 lists of characteristic fossils. 
 
136 SIR RODERICK MURCHISON. [i826-7. 
 
 inspect, including Charles Bonaparte (afterwards Prince of 
 Canino) and Murchison. 
 
 " The first operation we underwent (one which I never 
 repeated) was to go down in a diving-bell upon the cavity 
 by which the Thames had broken in. Buckland and Feather- 
 stonehaugh, having been the first to volunteer, came up with 
 such red faces and such staring eyes, that I confess I felt 
 no great inclination to follow their example, particularly as 
 Charles Bonaparte was most anxious to avoid the dilemma, 
 excusing himself by saying that his family was very short- 
 necked and subject to apoplexy, etc. ; but it would not do 
 to show the white feather ; I got in, and induced him to 
 follow me. The effect was, as I expected, most oppressive, 
 and then on the bottom what did we see but dirty gravel 
 and mud, from which I brought up a fragment of one of 
 Hunt's blacking-bottles. We soon pulled the string, and 
 were delighted to breathe the fresh air. 
 
 " The first folly was, however, quite overpowered by the 
 next. We went down the shaft on the south bank, and got, 
 with young Brunei, into a punt, which he was to steer into 
 the tunnel till we reached the repairing-shield. About eleven 
 feet of water were still in the tunnel, leaving just space 
 enough above our heads for Brunei to stand up and claw 
 the ceiling and sides to impel us. As we were proceeding 
 he called out, ' Now, gentlemen, if by accident there should 
 be a rush of water, I shall turn the punt over and prevent 
 you being jammed against the roof, and we shall then all be 
 carried out and up the shaft !' On this C. Bonaparte re- 
 marked, ' But I cannot swim !' and, just as he had said the 
 words, Brunei, swinging carelessly from right to left, fell 
 overboard, and out went of course the candles, with which 
 
1827.] PROPOSES A JOINT TOUR TO SEDGWICK. 137 
 
 he was lighting up the place. Taking this for the sauve 
 qui pent, fat C. B., then the very image of Napoleon at St. 
 Helena, was about to roll out after him, when I held him 
 fast, and, by the glimmering light from the entrance, we 
 found young Brunei, who swam like a fish, coming up on 
 the other side of the punt, and soon got him on board. We 
 of course called out for an immediate retreat, for really there 
 could not be a more foolhardy and ridiculous risk of our 
 lives, inasmuch as it was just the moment of trial as to 
 whether the Thames would make a further inroad or not." 
 
 As the spring months wore away, short visits to the 
 country could be resumed, as, for example, down to Oxford, 
 to join in one of the galloping excursions of the merry Pro- 
 fessor of Geology, or to Lewes to make the acquaintance of 
 Dr. Mantell, then in full medical practice, but who had 
 found time to distinguish himself as a zealous palaeontologist 
 and collector. In the course of these short and desultory 
 excursions, Murchison supplemented his former work in the 
 Petersfield district, and made himself master of the full suc- 
 cession of the cretaceous formations. 
 
 But a much more lengthy and ambitious tour had 
 already been planned. In the previous year, during the 
 rambles in Arran and elsewhere in the north, he had met 
 with many puzzling facts. Particularly had he been dis- 
 comfited by the problems presented by the red sandstones of 
 the west coast. And as we have already noted, he had 
 determined to return to the attack, bringing with him a 
 geologist of ampler knowledge and specially experienced in 
 the complicated structure of the older rocks. Of all his 
 geological friends none had won his respect and admiration 
 so entirely as Sedgwick. Admirable as an observer, clear 
 
138 SIR RODERICK MURCHISON. [1827. 
 
 and brilliant as an expositor, the Woodwardian Professor 
 was one of the kindliest, wittiest, merriest of companions. 
 While Murchison's pursuit of science was now and con- 
 tinued through life to be a serious earnest task, Sedgwick's 
 enthusiasm and earnestness, on the other hand, were quite 
 as great, his knowledge far greater, but he threw over 
 his scientific work the charm of his own bright genial 
 nature. Brimful of humour and bristling with apposite 
 anecdote, his scientific talk was greatly more entertaining 
 than the ordinary conversation of most good talkers, for he 
 could so place a dry scientific fact as to photograph it on the 
 memory while at the same time he linked it with something 
 droll or fanciful or tender, so that it seemed ever after to 
 wear a kind of human significance. No keener eye than his 
 ever ranged over the rocks of England, and yet while noting 
 each feature of their structure or scenery he delighted to carry 
 through his geological work an endless thread of fun and 
 wit. No wonder therefore that Murchison, who, though not 
 himself gifted with humour, had a keen relish for it as it 
 came from others, should have made choice of such a com- 
 panion. 
 
 But Sedgwick had already distinguished himself in the 
 difficult labour of unravelling the structure of some of the 
 older rocks of this country. And it was in the older rocks 
 that the problems lay which had baffled Murchison during 
 his first geological raid into Scotland. In every way the 
 society of the Cambridge Professor would be an advantage 
 to him ; it would give him at once a skilful instructor, a 
 generous fellow-labourer, and a buoyant companion. His 
 proposal that Sedgwick should return with him to Scotland 
 was accepted, and the two friends, destined to achieve many 
 
ADAM SKIKJWK'K, F.K.8. 
 
 I'l-inn it I'li 
 
1827.] FIRST TOUR WITH SEDGWICK. 139 
 
 an arduous and hard-won success in after years in the field 
 together, started on their first conjoint geological tour early 
 in July 1827. 
 
 The main object of this journey was to ascertain if 
 possible the true relations of the red sandstones of Scot- 
 land a subject in regard to which Murchison himself had 
 observed many difficult or apparently contradictory facts in 
 the previous year, and which the maps and writings of Mac- 
 culloch had not fully explained. The route chosen agreed on 
 the whole with that previously followed by Murchison and 
 his wife Arran, Mull, Skye, thence through the north of 
 Sutherlandshire to the east coast of Caithness, and then 
 southwards by Elgin, Aberdeen, Forfarshire, Edinburgh, 
 Dumfriesshire, Carlisle, and Newcastle, to York. 
 
 Throughout by much the greater part of the country to 
 be traversed in the Highland tracts comparatively little had 
 been done by geologists beyond the maps and memoirs of 
 Macculloch, and hence there was little in the way of pub- 
 lished description to be read before starting. From a loose 
 slip of paper found among Murchison's repositories, it 
 appears that in the absence of geological memoranda he 
 had taken to the acquisition of words and phrases in Gaelic, 
 and had written down such as he judged would be most 
 useful. The reader may think this list rather an ominous 
 one when he is told that it begins with the question in 
 Gaelic, "Where is the public-house?" and ends off with 
 " ooshke clay hot water." 
 
 From this long and well-worked journey Murchison 
 profited greatly. Under Sedgwick's guidance he saw clearly 
 enough now the meaning of things which had puzzled him 
 not a little before. For example, even at that early time, 
 
HO SIR RODERICK MURCHISON. [1827. 
 
 Sedgwick had distinguished that peculiar structure in rocks 
 to which the name of "cleavage" is now given, and taught 
 his companion to recognise it. 1 Fractures and foldings, with 
 other broad features of geological structure in a region of 
 old dislocated and altered rocks, were likewise unravelled. 
 
 But with Sedgwick in the party the tour could not pos- 
 sibly be all work and no play. They threw themselves 
 heartily into the ways of the Highlanders, and made friends 
 all along the route, ate haggises and drank whisky at one 
 house, danced in rough coats and hobnailed boots in an- 
 other, brightened with talk and tale the drawing-room of a 
 third. Much of the journey was performed on foot over 
 wild moor and mountain, or in a crazy boat through the 
 winding fjords. Some of the expeditions too were under- 
 taken in such storms of wind and rain as are seldom seen 
 anywhere in Britain out of that north-western region. Hence 
 they returned to the south country, not without adventures to 
 boast of, how, for example, they were nearly lost in boating 
 from Greinord to Ullapool, and saved, so Sedgwick said, by 
 his vigorous help in bailing the leaky boat with his hat, 
 or how, Sedgwick wearing a plaid which he had bought from 
 a shepherd, they were taken by a bustling landlady for a 
 couple of drovers, and got but scant courtesy, or how, to 
 prevent a like mistake at Forfar, Murchison insisted on 
 
 1 Among the slate-quarries of Ballachulish they met with examples of 
 cleavage which Sedgwick pointed out on the spot to K. von Oeynhausen 
 and H. von Dechen, then rambling through Scotland and gathering ma- 
 terials for the papers on various parts of Highland geology, which they 
 afterwards published in Karsten's Archiv. He failed to convince them 
 that there was any essential difference between the original stratification 
 of the rocks and the lines of cleavage, even though the argument lasted 
 long, in one of the deluges of rain so characteristic of that weeping 
 climate. 
 
1827.] 
 
 FIRST TOUR WITH SEDGWICK. 
 
 141 
 
 going first into the inn, and, to his companion's delight, was 
 shown into the tap -room ! from which, however, the retired 
 captain of dragoons discharged such a characteristically mili- 
 tary volley of denunciation as speedily brought both landlord 
 and landlady with profuse apologies and a loud command of 
 " wax-lights for the gentlemen." Among these incidents of 
 travel one curious coincidence made an impression upon 
 Murchison's Highland susceptibilities. His mother, as we 
 have seen, was a Mackenzie of Fairburn, born in the ances- 
 
 Red Sandstone Mountains on the West Coast of Sutherland. 
 
 tral Tower. There had been a tradition in the district to 
 the effect that the lands should pass out of the hands of the 
 Mackenzies, and that " the sow should litter in the lady's 
 chamber." The old tower had now become a ruin, and the 
 two travellers turned aside to see it. " The Professor and 
 I," says Murchison, " were groping our way up the broken 
 stone stair-case, when we were almost knocked over by a 
 rush of two or three pigs that had been nestling up-stairs 
 in the very room in which my mother was born." 
 
142 SIR RODERICK MURCHISON. [isw. 
 
 After seeing most of the red sandstone tracts of Scot- 
 land the two travellers re-entered England by Carlisle, 
 crossed to Newcastle, and revisited some of the sporting 
 scenes of earlier years. One of the friends they saw was 
 Murchison's former fox-hunting chief, Lord Darlington, 
 who, he writes, " laughed at my new hobby which had 
 converted me into ' an earth-stopper ! ' " a simile worthy 
 of a veteran Nimrod who hunted every day of the week 
 except Sunday. 
 
 With the winter came back the usual routine of London 
 life. The Secretaryship of the Geological Society demanded 
 a good deal of time and labour, and the President, Dr. Fitton, 
 kept a sharp eye on his subordinates, so much so, indeed, that 
 an actual rupture took place between him and Murchison, 
 which was only healed after much correspondence, and by 
 the intervention of friends, who endeavoured to convince the 
 President that he was too exacting, and the Secretary that 
 he was too insubordinate. Murchison kept all the letters he 
 received on the subject, and inscribed on the outside of the 
 packet, " 1827. Some months' waste of time Fittoniana, 
 or disputes with my warm-hearted but peppery friend Dr. 
 Fitton." 
 
 But besides looking after the lucubrations of other writers 
 aspiring to geological fame, he had plenty of work this winter 
 in extending for the Society his notes of the Scottish tour 
 with Sedgwick. The latter was full of work at Cambridge ; 
 suffering, too, from weak eyes, and given to " water-drinking 
 and dephlogisticating," apt, therefore, to delay what he could 
 push aside for a time, and needing, as he said himself, an 
 occasional nudge on the elbow. His pen was required for 
 
1827.] SEDQWICK AS FELLOW-LABOURER. 143 
 
 the conjoint memoir as much as his hammer had been for 
 the work in the field ; but who could expect much continuous 
 literary labour from a man who could speak of himself thus ? 
 " Behold me now !" he says, in a letter to Murchison (28th 
 October), " in a new character, strutting about and looking 
 dignified, with a cap, gown, cassock, and a huge pair of 
 bands the terror of all academical evil-doers in short, a 
 perfect moral scavenger. My time has been much taken up 
 with the petty details of my office, and in showing the lions 
 to divers papas and mammas, who, at this time of the year, 
 come up to the University with the rising hopes of their 
 families. This week I have to make a Latin speech to the 
 Senate, not one word of which is yet written. I mean to 
 write a new syllabus of my lectures, which commence in 
 about a week ; in short, my hands are as full as they well 
 can be. I will, however, do the best I can for our joint-stock 
 work" 
 
 The two friends had resolved to make their work in the 
 Highlands the subject of two Memoirs for the Geological 
 Society one on Arran, and one on the Conglomerates of the 
 northern and eastern counties. The former of these was at 
 last read to the Society in January 1828, but the second was 
 kept back by Sedgwick's delay. In a later letter he refers 
 to a hint from Dr. Fitton to make haste, lest Murchison 
 should forestall him, and generously speaks of their joint 
 share in the field-work thus : " You worked harder in 
 many respects than I did myself, and till we reached the 
 east coast, and indeed there also, you were my geological 
 guide." Weeks slip away, and still no help comes from the 
 Woodwardian Professor, who writes to his friend, " I fear 
 
144 SIR RODERICK MURCHISON. [wa. 
 
 you will think me a sorry coadjutor, for all the work is left 
 to yourself. This is not as it ought to be, but I am at pre- 
 sent almost a lame soldier." Still time passes, and brings 
 April round without the completion of Sedgwick's contribu- 
 tion. On the 7th of that month he says, " You call upon 
 me ' for my own reputation and your peace of mind to make 
 ready.' I promise, if God spare my health and preserve me 
 of sane mind, to have all in good state before the reading ; 
 but to expect that our documents should exactly tally, so 
 that we have only to stitch them together, is to expect im- 
 possibilities. One is making a key, and the other a lock, 
 which never can fit till the wards are well rasped and filed. 
 To rasp and file will be part of my office, as well as to fit on 
 a head and tail." At last, on the 16th May, the conjoint 
 paper 1 was fairly launched before the Geological Society. 
 
 Murchison had left London for the Continent before that 
 date. His fellow-labourer, however, sent him an account of 
 the reception of their first conjoint work. " Our paper," 
 Sedgwick writes, " increased to such a size that it was ob- 
 
 1 Among the excellent details in the paper on Arran (Oeol. Trans., 2d 
 series, vol. ii.), the authors erred in identifying the various rocks with 
 supposed English equivalents. The structure of the island is too com- 
 plex to be worked out offhand in a week or two, and some of its problems 
 are even yet not understood. 
 
 The paper on the Old Bed Sandstone of the North of Scotland likewise 
 showed great observing skill ; but the same risk of error, from compara- 
 tively hurried examination of a few traverses, was shown in it. The 
 authors massed all the red sandstones of the west and east coast an 
 error which they committed, though knowing what Macculloch had 
 written on the subject, and which Murchison many years later discarded. 
 One special merit of the paper was the important announcement (con- 
 firming that made in the Brora paper), of the abundant fossil fishes found 
 in many parts of Caithness, and the plates and descriptions given of some 
 of the forms, which in later years were to become so well known through 
 the writings of Hugh Miller. 
 
1828.] FIRST JOINT PAPER WITH SEDGWICK. 145 
 
 viously too large to be taken in at one meeting. . . . All 
 went off well, and ended with the dish of Caithness fish, 
 which were beautifully cooked by Pentland, and much 
 
 D iptcnts. 
 
 relished by the meeting. Greenough, Buckland, Conybeare, 
 and all the first performers were upon the boards." 
 
 These are confessedly details of no 'great moment in 
 themselves. They seem, however, to find a fitting place 
 here, inasmuch as they serve to show the hearty spirit of 
 friendship and co-operation with which these two men 
 worked together in the early years of their intercourse. 
 
 VOL. I. 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 
 FIKST GEOLOGICAL RAIDS INTO THE CONTINENT. 
 
 THE three years which had now passed away since his 
 geological hammer was first buckled on had been to Mur - 
 chison a time of hard work. Even in mere physical exer- 
 tion his labour had been great, and would be inadequately 
 represented by the statement that he had trudged on foot for 
 many hundreds of miles over rough shores and still more 
 rugged mountains. His enthusiasm had been so thoroughly 
 awakened that there was now no risk of desertion from the 
 scientific ranks. He had learnt a vast deal in that short 
 interval, and learnt it too where alone it can be truly 
 mastered in the field. Of the many avenues of research 
 which the infant science of Geology was opening, he had 
 already chosen that along which he was to rise to eminence. 
 Whether in the south of England, among late secondary 
 and tertiary rocks, or in the north and west of Scotland, 
 among some of the oldest palaeozoic masses, his leading aim 
 had been to unravel the true order of arrangement of the 
 rocks, and show their relation to each other and to those of 
 other and better known regions. In this pursuit he felt 
 
1883.] SUCCESS IN GEOLOGY.. H7 
 
 that he could distinguish himself, and he had, dtene so. With 
 leisure at command and a wide field for exertion, spurred 
 too by a real love for the work as well as by a strong desire 
 to be prominent, his first three years of geological labour at 
 home had been a marked success. From a mere beginner 
 he had speedily become one of the prominent men at the 
 Geological Society, and one of the most ardent and pro- 
 mising of the rising geologists of his day. 
 
 So thoroughly had geology dispossessed, at least for the 
 time, all other occupations, that his note-books for these years 
 contain memoranda of hardly anything else. Elaborately 
 does he detail every section which he saw ; minutely does 
 he describe every step and stage of each of his journeys. 
 The main scientific results have long been given to the 
 world, and there remains, besides the mere dry itinerary, 
 but the scantiest residuum of personal matters to show in 
 what other ways his thoughts and time were engaged. 
 Among his papers occur notes of invitation a dinner with 
 Davy, a soiree at Fitton's, or memoranda of meetings and 
 consultations with friends of the Eoyal or Geological 
 Society, and jottings enough to show that his scientific 
 pursuits had in no way slackened his general activity and 
 energy, or lessened his pleasure in the convivialities of 
 society. 
 
 But having successfully essayed his strength among the 
 rocks of his own country, it was not to be supposed that he 
 would long refrain from making a dash at those of the Con- 
 tinent, where it was thought that a good deal might be 
 done in applying the principles of classification which had 
 been so successfully used among the Secondary rocks of 
 England. Accordingly in the winter of 1827-8 he began to 
 
148 SIR RODERICK MURCHISON. [IMS. 
 
 turn his thoughts towards a foray of that kind. The result 
 was that, once abroad, he found so much of novelty and 
 interest there as to bring him back again and again. Hence 
 for the next three years the scene of his labours extended 
 from the Straits of Dover through central and southern 
 France to the shores of the Adriatic on the one hand, and 
 through Rhineland, Bavaria, and Austria into Hungary on 
 the other. 
 
 The first of these continental excursions was planned to 
 include the centre and south of France, the north of Italy, 
 and parts of Switzerland. As usual, copious notes were 
 made from the various authors who had treated of the 
 geology of these tracts. " I induced my wife," he writes, 
 " to accompany me as well as my associate, Charles Lyell. 
 We were off in April, and on the 26th of that month were 
 at work in the field with Constant Prevost, following his 
 subdivisions of the Paris basin. The theoretical views of 
 Prevost made a deep impression on Lyell, who, as far as I 
 can judge, imbibed some of his best ideas of the operation 
 [sic] of land and fresh water alternations with marine de- 
 posits from the persevering and ingenious Frenchman." 
 
 At Paris they met also Cuvier, Brongniart, Deshayes, 
 FJie de Beaumont, Desmarest, Dufrenoy, and other scientific 
 men of mark, and made further notes for the summer's work. 
 By the beginning of June they found themselves among the 
 wonderful extinct volcanic cones of Auvergne. This singu- 
 larly interesting region had been admirably described shortly 
 before, both with pen and pencil, by Mr. Poulett Scrope, 
 whose memoir they carried with them. They were fortunate, 
 moreover, in having an introduction to Count Montlosier, 
 one of the noblesse of Auvergne, who, while taking part in the 
 
1888.] AMONG THE PUYS OF AUVERGNE. 149 
 
 political struggles of his country, had devoted himself also 
 to the study of the volcanic rocks of that district, which he 
 had described with great spirit and accuracy. Amid the 
 troubles of the time he had lost all his property, " except a 
 portion of mountain which was too ungrateful a soil to find 
 another purchaser." Eetiring to this retreat in his old age he 
 had built himself a cottage in an extinct crater. " The tra- 
 veller in approaching the door of the philosopher of Eandane 
 had to wade through scoriae and ashes ; " but beyond these 
 obstacles he found a hospitable roof and a host whose " lofty 
 and vigorous presence accorded well with his frank and 
 chivalrous demeanour." l A hearty welcome awaited our 
 three tourists. Their coming had been anticipated by the 
 old Count, from whom on reaching Clermont they found 
 awaiting them a note of invitation and welcome (still 
 extant) couched in that tone of mingled dignity, courtesy, 
 and cordiality which seems now one of the lost arts. " He 
 was charmed to see us," records Murchison, " and to go over 
 all his old volcanic subjects, and instruct us on every feature 
 around his residence, except on the post day when his 
 papers and letters came. Then he flew to them, excusing 
 himself with the old French politesse, ' Pardonnez, Mes- 
 sieurs et Madame ; mais c'est ma vie.' " 2 
 
 The three gentlemen, on foot or on horseback, and Mrs. 
 Murchison on a stout pony of the Count's, explored together 
 the cones of cinders and cheires of lava. Even to one who 
 is familiar with volcanoes the first sight of these marvel- 
 
 1 Whewell, Proc. Geol. Soc., iii. 70. 
 
 2 The Count Montlosier " died in 1837, at the age of eighty-three, on 
 his way to Paris to take his seat in the Chamber of Peers, of which he 
 was a member." See a brief sketch of him by Dr. Whewell, in the 
 address referred to in the preceding note. 
 
150 SIR RODERICK MURCHISON. [isas. 
 
 lously fresh cones and craters and lava-rivers fills the mind 
 with astonishment. He wanders perhaps up a narrow and 
 picturesque valley feathered with birch and broom down the 
 sides, and gaily green with meadow and orchard along the 
 bottom. Suddenly he comes upon the rough black lava, 
 usurping the channel of the stream, and still bare and 
 bristling, as if it had only yesterday stiffened into rest. And 
 then climbing further by the edge of the lava-torrent, he 
 comes at last in sight of the marvel of the region the chain 
 of Puys cones of volcanic materials still so perfect that he is 
 tempted to watch if steam or smoke cannot still be seen rising 
 from their tops. But when, crossing the lava stream, he 
 mounts the steep sides of one of these old volcanoes, he finds it 
 cold and silent. There beneath him lies the crater a deep 
 hole sunk into the summit of the hill, no longer breathing 
 out volcanic heat and fumes, but carpeted even to the 
 bottom with turf, and fragrant with many a wild-flower. 
 And from these depths, whence in old times came the snort- 
 ing and bellowing of the volcano, there rises now on the 
 breeze only the tinkle of the cattle-bells or the hum of the 
 bee. 
 
 These are the youngest of the volcanoes of Central France, 
 but all round them lie fragments of older and yet older 
 eruptions, pointing to a long protracted volcanic period so 
 long, indeed, that the rivers of the district had been able to 
 cut out in the older lavas deep and wide valleys, down which 
 some of the later lavas flowed. Beyond measure instructive, 
 therefore, is such a country to the geologist, inasmuch as it 
 places before him admirable illustrations of the action both 
 of subterranean and external forces. 
 
 Amid such scenes as these, our travellers spent some six 
 
1828.] IN SOUTHERN FRANCE AND ITALY. 151 
 
 weeks, riding, climbing, driving, and filling note-book and 
 sketch-book with memoranda of rocks and scenery. These 
 rambles bore fruit during the succeeding winter in papers 
 which were read before the Geological Society. 1 
 
 Turning eastward, the travellers journeyed leisurely down 
 the valley of the Ehone, looking at rocks and antiquities by 
 the way, until they reached Montpelier, and thence passed 
 on by Nismes to Aix, in Provence. 2 After quitting Toulon, 
 an incident occurred to mar the good spirits and hinder the 
 work of the party. Murchison caught a malaria fever, and 
 became rapidly delirious. He soon recovered, however, and, 
 except a temporary loss of strength, suffered no evil effects, 
 escaping more fortunately than his wife had done, for the 
 symptoms of the fever she was seized with at Eome used to 
 return upon her at intervals all through life. To recruit him 
 a halt of nearly three weeks was made at Nice, where the 
 invalid soon regained his former activity, scouring the dis- 
 trict all round the town under the guidance of Eisso the 
 conchologist, who led him over the fossiliferous deposits. 
 
 While recruiting his health at Nice, Murchison sent an 
 account of the tour to the Woodwardian Professor, from 
 which a few sentences may be quoted. In Central France 
 " we left various things undone, consoling ourselves that 
 such a case was to be worked out by Sedgwick next year. 
 And here let me, by way of parenthesis, invoke the philo- 
 sophical spirit of inquiry which prevails at Cambridge, and 
 urge you, who are really almost our only mathematical 
 
 1 " On the Excavation of Valleys, as illustrated by the Volcanic Rocks 
 of Central France." By Charles Lyell and Roderick I. Murchison. 
 Proc. Oeol. 8oc., i. 89. See also p. 140. 
 
 2 See Proc. Oeol. Soc., i. 150, where their conjoint paper on this tract 
 is given. 
 
152 SIR RODERICK MURCHISON. [isas. 
 
 champion, not to let another year elapse without endeav- 
 ouring to add to the stock of your British geology some of 
 the continental materials. Pray do it before you marry and 
 settle for life ; pray even do it before you bring forth that 
 long-expected second volume on the Geology of England 
 and "Wales j 1 your comparisons will then have a strength 
 and freshness which will quite electrify us." "We met 
 with splendid cases of basalt and trap, rivalling in an- 
 tiquity of aspect our northern acquaintances," " splendid 
 proofs of the extraordinary amount of excavation in the 
 valleys," two thousand feet or more of fresh-water strata, 
 with apparently " everything which characterizes even the 
 older secondaries" "red sandstones," "grits, shales," "an 
 excellent cornstone, and beneath this lymnece and planorbes ;" 
 little " coal-fields true chips of the old coal-block." " In 
 dust and insufferable heat, which have never quitted us 
 since, we descended the Ehone." " The only cool place we 
 could find was Buckland's hyaena cave at Lunel. Our 
 journey across to Aix en Provence was most interesting, 
 and that place offered so much that we halted a week, our 
 work being now reduced to four or five hours in the morn- 
 ing, from four to nine, and a little in the evening. We 
 hope to show you twenty or thirty species of insects !! from 
 the gypsum quarries there. In this city of idleness we 
 have been pent up during ten days, not daring to travel 
 into Italy with these heats : it has not rained one drop here 
 for eight months." 
 
 After making a number of excursions together in the 
 Vicentin, Mr. Lyell having finally resolved to abandon law 
 and devote himself wholly to geology, turned off southwards 
 1 Conybeare and Phillips' Outlines being considered the first volume. 
 
1823.] IN THE TYROL. 153 
 
 to pursue his inquiries among the tertiary rocks, while the 
 other two travellers struck eastwards to Venice, and thence 
 into the Alps. At Bassano, Murchison collected materials 
 for a paper on the tertiary and secondary rocks of the 
 Tyrolese Alps, which was read to the Geological Society in 
 the following spring. Ascending by Botzen, he examined 
 the now well-known earth-pillars tall pyramids of stony 
 clay, each with a stone or big boulder on its summit, and 
 conjectured their materials to have been accumulated by 
 " powerful torrents coincident with the elevation of the 
 chain." At that time the former extension of the glaciers 
 of the Alps had not yet been realized by geologists. Hence 
 not at Botzen only, but up the valley of the Inn, and in 
 other parts of the mountains traversed in this tour, Murchison, 
 following the prevalent notions of the time, looked upon all 
 the masses of " drift," with travelled blocks, as the results of 
 powerful deluges or delddes, which swept down the valleys 
 or over the hills. 
 
 Having recently supplied the Geological Society with 
 what Sedgwick called " a dish of fossil fish" from the old 
 red sandstone of Caithness, he took the opportunity of turn- 
 ing aside to collect another meal of the same materials from 
 the bituminous schists of Seefeld a little mountain village 
 of the Tyrol, where some of the rocks were so impregnated 
 with animal matter, from the abundance of fish remains 
 imbedded in them, that for generations the villagers had 
 been in the habit of roasting fragments of the stone, out of 
 which they obtained oil for their lamps and cart-wheels. 
 This little episode was turned to account in the following 
 winter, and bore fruit in a paper upon these dark schists 
 and their fish, read to the Geological Society. 
 
154 SIR RODERICK MURCHISON. [ISSB. 
 
 A leisurely journey, with many halts by the way to 
 allow of the use of hammer and sketch-book, brought the 
 travellers through the picturesque tract between the valley 
 of the Inn and the Lake of Constance, and thence once more 
 into Switzerland. But this time it was not fine scenery, nor 
 even a field for feats of pedestrianism, which formed the 
 chief attractions of the country. At every resting-place an 
 attempt was made to ascertain the nature and sequence of 
 the rocks, and as much time and labour were now given to 
 hunt up an old quarry as in former days would have been 
 gladly given to find out a half-hidden specimen of an old 
 master. Eeaching Stein, Murchison set at once about ex- 
 ploring the quarries of Oeningen, famous for having formerly 
 yielded the skeleton which Scheuchzer gravely described as 
 " Homo diluvii testis ;" but which more recent science has 
 shown to be not human, but salamandrine. " To my joy I 
 learnt," he writes, " that in the last two years the quarries 
 had been re- opened, and that a very remarkable new quad- 
 ruped had been recently exhumed. This splendid fossil had 
 fallen into the hands of a doctor and a silversmith of the 
 little town, and was in the house of the former, where I in- 
 spected it, and counted twenty-three vertebras. On the whole 
 it was like a dog, fox, or wolf. I resolved at once to acquire 
 it, provided, on my return to Paris, M. Cuvier should pro- 
 nounce upon its value, the sum asked being 30. It was 
 however, essential that I should have a drawing, and there- 
 fore my wife stole out with her pattens across the muddy 
 street early next morning, before the doctor was up, and 
 induced the servant girl to let her in to sketch the beast. 
 The moment Cuvier saw the drawing he said it was in all 
 probability a fox. Of course an old fox-hunter like me 
 
1828.] FINDS A FOSSIL FOX. 155 
 
 could not resist the bonne louche of finding the first fossil 
 fox, and, writing back from Paris, I acquired the animal, 
 which I gave to the British Museum, 1 and which Owen has 
 since turned into the ' dog of the marsh/ more nearly 
 related to the civet-cat than any other living animal." 2 
 
 Journeying by Basle, Strasbourg, the Vosges mountains, 
 and thence through France, with many a stop and detour to 
 visit geological sections or the contents of museums, the 
 travellers did not reach England until the end of October. 
 They had thus been six months abroad. During that time 
 Murchison seems to have done his best not to let a single 
 day pass without adding to his stock of geological know- 
 ledge. With an enthusiasm which must have made him 
 a somewhat troublesome companion, he spared no bodily 
 fatigue in pursuit of his inquiries, throwing himself as 
 heartily into questions regarding the order of succession 
 among the rocks of each town or valley he visited, as if the 
 place had been his home. The work of these six months 
 was reduced to form in two memoirs, which he himself pre- 
 pared in the succeeding winter for the Geological Society, 
 and in three conjoint papers written in concert with Mr. 
 Lyell. But the results are to be measured not so much 
 by these published records of them as by their influence in 
 finally clenching his geological bent, and fixing him in that 
 stratigraphical groove in which he had made his first essay 
 in the south of England, and in which, with but short and 
 not altogether successful deviations, he was to pursue his 
 geological career to the end. 
 
 1 The counterpart slate he gave to the Geological Society. 
 
 2 Professor Owen named this unique specimen Galecynus Oeningensis, 
 and regarded it as belonging to " an extinct genus intermediate between 
 canis and viverra." See Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc., iii. (1847), p. 60 ; and 
 Palceontohgy, 2d edit., p. 412. 
 
156 SIR RODERICK MURCHISON. [isss-9. 
 
 The winter of 1828-9 was spent as usual in London. 
 The preparation of the five memoirs just referred to, as well 
 as the business of the Secretaryship of the Geological 
 Society, kept Murchison's hands full enough of work. 1 " M. 
 Valenciennes, " he notes, " was in London this winter and 
 helped me to describe the fossil fish of Seefeld, and I was 
 gathering knowledge from Stokes, Broderip, Wollaston, 
 Buckland, Greenough, Lindley, Curtis the entomologist, 
 Konig, Webster, and Mantell." He found time, however, 
 to do a little field-work now and then, for in visiting friends 
 in the country he came no longer simply as a sportsman. 
 Some of the notes of invitation of these years occur among 
 his papers, and show that his new zeal for stones furnished 
 many a point for a quiet joke at his expense, where the 
 writers, while referring half deprecatingly to the use which 
 they could wish to see him make of his gun, are at pains to 
 assure him that he need not want opportunities of wielding 
 his hammer. 
 
 With spring and the prospect of fresh work in the field 
 plans were vigorously sketched for a new campaign. Again 
 an attack on the structure of the Alps was decided upon, 
 but this time it was not to be single-handed. Professor 
 Sedgwick had agreed to share in the toil and glory of the 
 warfare, having determined to quit for a time his books at 
 Cambridge and his vacation rambles at home, and trust him- 
 self with his hypochondria to the rough fare of unfrequented 
 routes abroad. It was again Murchison's task to collect all 
 the information obtainable from papers or friends as to the 
 geology of the tracts to be visited. 
 
 1 Among his note-books there is one with detailed notes of a series of 
 lectures on the structure of birds, which he attended during the spring of 
 1829. 
 
1829.] GOTTINGEN AND BLUMENBACH. 157 
 
 In June the two travellers set out together, and travel- 
 ling rapidly by Bonn, the volcanic tract of the Laacher See, 
 Coblenz, and Cassel, halted at Gottingen to geologize. 
 There they chanced by a curious coincidence to stumble 
 upon their two Prussian friends, von Oeynhausen and von 
 Dechen, with whom they had held the fierce argumentation 
 in a deluge of rain at Glencoe. " I was just about to sally 
 out," Murchison writes to his wife, " when little Oeynhausen 
 popped his nose into the room where S. and self were dress- 
 ing. In an instant we were in each other's arms, and I 
 can assure you that he kissed me on each cheek at least a 
 score of times. And the Professor did not come off with a 
 short allowance. Think of our good luck ! He with his 
 nouvelle mariee, mother-in-law, and Dechen with his sposa 
 are here. The vivacious little Prussian discovered me by 
 the name upon my hammer, as it hung out of the old stone- 
 bag in the carriage-yard." Again, he records that at Got- 
 tingen " Our hero (Sedgwick specially rejoiced in him) was 
 old Professor Blumenbach, then eighty-six years of age, on 
 whom we called. He told us loads of amusing anecdotes. 
 Among his numerous skulls he showed me one of a High- 
 lander sent to him by Sir George Mackenzie, and he denied 
 that my countrymen had higher cheek-bones than other 
 people. We afterwards attended his lecture of the day on 
 insects, and were astonished at his versatile powers, his 
 extraordinary action, his fine deep voice, and impressive 
 countenance. Whether he rolled out hard words with all 
 the rapidity of a youth, or thumped his desk with all the 
 vivacity of a youth, or suddenly paused abruptly to explain 
 with a broad slow ' aber, aber/ before he finished by some 
 reservations, I looked at him as the most original of God's 
 
158 SIR RODERICK MURCHISON. [isa. 
 
 works I had ever seen. As I had presented him in the morn- 
 ing with some of my fossil insects from Aix, he launched out 
 in illustration of these flies and bugs which had lived ' vor 
 Menschen/ and then carried his pupils off to the British 
 Museum and our gigantic Scarabeeus in granite. Drinking 
 tea with him in the evening, Blumenbach equally astonished 
 us by his extensive reading and wonderful memory, whether 
 he adverted to metaphysics and Bishop Berkeley, to Scottish 
 history and scenery and Walter Scott, or the vitrified forts 
 and Sir George Mackenzie." 1 
 
 Turning northward the two travellers made their way 
 through the Harz Mountains and thence by way of Halle to 
 Berlin. At that early time the older palaeozoic rocks were 
 all classed together under the uncouth title of " grauwacke," 
 and among Murchison's notes reference is made to the " in- 
 terminable grauwacke," which deprived so much of the 
 journey of geological interest. Strange that before many 
 years passed away it was among such rocks that he earned 
 his chief title to scientific fame, and that they offered attrac- 
 tion enough to lead him hundreds of miles from home, and 
 to keep him busy over mountain and valley for months 
 together ! This very region of the Harz, as we shall find, 
 furnished, only ten years later, abundant interest and plenty 
 of hard work for the two fellow-labourers among these same 
 grauwacke masses. In the meanwhile, however, these rocks 
 seem to have had somewhat of a depressing effect upon 
 Murchison's spirits, so that the wit and sparkle of the Pro- 
 fessor were never more welcome. 
 
 The halt at Halle brought them in contact with a real 
 
 1 A brief biographical sketch of this remarkable man will be found in 
 vol. iii. of the Proceedings of the Geological Society, p. 533. 
 
1829.] WITH SEDGWICK EASTERN ALPS. 159 
 
 living specimen of a staunch Wernerian in the person of 
 Professor Germar, who expounded the geology of the country 
 after the system of his master, no doubt to the infinite 
 delectation of the Cambridge Professor, who must have 
 looked upon the old theorist as an interesting relic of a 
 species of geologist that was gradually becoming extinct. 
 But they succeeded in picking up a few scraps of informa- 
 tion regarding some of the regions included in their pro- 
 gramme of travel, and their visit to Berlin was similarly 
 successful. 
 
 Southward the journey lay by Dresden through Bohemia 
 to Vienna and the confines of Hungary, and thence by the 
 caves of Adelsberg to Trieste, "a hot hole, although it has some 
 luxuries in it good ice and water-melons that would make 
 any man ill except Sedgwick." From that point, which was 
 the limit of their journey, the travellers bent their steps 
 homeward again through the Carinthian Alps, the Tyrol, and 
 the Salzkammergut, striking westward into Switzerland by 
 the Lake of Constance, and descending the Ehine to Stras- 
 bourg, whence they found their way across Prance, so as to 
 reach England once more in the end of October. 
 
 Some of the pleasantest days of this tour were those in 
 which the travellers enjoyed the society of that remarkable 
 man, the Archduke John, among his mountain retreats in 
 Carinthia. " Our chief object in coming to Gastein," Mur- 
 chison writes, " was to wait upon the most scientific Prince 
 in Europe, the Archduke John, and he received us with cor- 
 diality and frankness. We dined at the rural table-d'hote, 
 at which the landlord presided, carved, and could boast 
 with pride that his ancestors had kept the inn for 350 years. 
 At this board, besides the Archduke, we had imperial minis- 
 
160 SIR RODERICK MURCHISON. \\m. 
 
 ters and generals, Prussian nobles, as well as professors and 
 geologists. After dinner we set out to ascend, in a char a 
 bane, with the Archduke and his chamberlain, to the upper 
 cascades at Naasfeld. We passed the village of Bockstein, 
 where the gold ore is washed, and thence viewed the snowy 
 range of the Ankogel, to the summit of which the Arch- 
 duke had ascended, viz., 10,000 feet high, and seven hours' 
 good walk above the highest chalet. We reached the upper 
 fall at sunset, and were then in the region of summer- 
 chalets, and surrounded by snowy peaks and glaciers, the 
 boundary between Carinthia and the Salzburg region. 
 
 "The Archduke was a capital cicerone, and talked 
 familiarly with every one we met. One of these was a 
 rough Carinthian packman, whose broad lingo amused us, 
 and reminded me of Goldsmith's line 
 
 ' Or onward where the rude Carinthian boor ;' 
 
 though I do not think that Oliver, for the sake of rhyme, 
 had any right to add 
 
 ' Against the houseless stranger shuts his door.' 
 Nor would the Archduke allow that they were a bad set of 
 fellows, though very inferior to his Styrians and Tyrolese. 
 All the miners were ' hail-fellow ' with the Prince i.e. with 
 perfectly good manners, but with no mauvaise honte. 
 
 " On our homeward trip on foot we had a petit souper of 
 fresh trout, which the Archduke had ordered for us in the 
 village of Bockstein, and in approaching the cabaret several 
 peasant girls ran out with their little nosegays, and to kiss 
 his hand ; whilst he of course put the flowers into his broad- 
 brimmed Styrian hat. As we walked down the valley in a 
 fine starlight night we had much enlivening chat, and we 
 soon perceived how honest a liberal the Prince was. He 
 
1829.J THE ARCHDUKE JOHN IN CARINTHIA. 161 
 
 laughed at all the old stiffness and prejudice of the Austrian 
 court, to the dress of which his Styrian jacket, black leather 
 shorts, and long green worsted stockings presented a marked 
 contrast. He is a first-rate chamois-hunter, and kills about 
 forty bucks annually. . . . He talked with delight of 
 everything in his dear Styria, the clean inns, honest inn- 
 keepers, and pretty waiting-maids. He specially abused all 
 men-waiters, who had found their way to Gratz, and whom 
 he stigmatized as ' des hommes de deux maitres ' i.e. as 
 waiters and ' agens de la haute police.' 
 
 " Next morning we were at the door of the Archduke by 
 appointment at 7. It was opened by a bluff Styrian jager, 
 who beckoned us into the curate's small sitting-room, then 
 the only residence of his Imperial Highness, whom we found 
 on his knees, his hob -nailed boots taken off, and busily at 
 work laying out on the floor the Austrian trigonometrical 
 map of the surrounding Alps for our inspection. Showing 
 us all the passes, he gave us many good instructions." 
 
 The scientific fruits of this expedition have long been 
 before the world. They were given to the Geological Society 
 in four successive papers during the succeeding winter and 
 spring. Such rapid work among the broken and contorted 
 rocks of a complicated geological region could not but con- 
 tain many errors. Yet it must remain as a striking example 
 of keen and quick observation, and of often happy, though 
 not always accurate, generalization. In addition to their re- 
 searches on the structure of the Austrian Alps, the travellers 
 were struck by two classes of facts which could not but 
 arrest the notice of men whose geological types had hitherto 
 been mainly English. In the first place, they found thick 
 beds of good black coal, masses of millstone, oolite, and 
 
 VOL. I. L 
 
162 SIR RODERICK MURCHISON. [ia. 
 
 other hard rocks, to be not older than some of the soft 
 tertiary sands and clays at home. Well might Murchison 
 write " Away went all our old notions of mineral terms 
 applied to geological formations as any indications of their 
 age." In the next place, they were again and again arrested, 
 and as it were appalled, by the formidable ravines and chasms 
 which bear witness to the enormous yearly waste of the Alps. 
 At one part of the course of the Fella they noticed that a 
 single night of heavy rain had buried the roadway under a 
 vast pile of rubbish swept down from the mountain-sides. 
 " As there are countless such torrents rushing down into the 
 Tagliamento and its tributaries, which is one of the six chief 
 rivers that flow into the Adriatic between Trieste and Venice, 
 we can well imagine how that sea must be encroached 
 upon, and at what a rate the sides and gorges of the Alps are 
 wearing away." 
 
 In another respect the tour had not been without its 
 fruits. It brought the two English geologists into direct 
 personal relation with the geologists of Germany, from whom 
 they received much kind attention and assistance. A ground- 
 work was thus laid for much pleasant and friendly inter- 
 course in later years. In passing through France too they 
 formed or renewed acquaintance with several brethren of the 
 hammer in that country, notably with M. lie de Beau- 
 mont, whom they met at Boulogne, and from whom, then in 
 the early enthusiasm of his pentagonal theory, they received 
 details regarding the order in which he supposed the moun- 
 tains of the globe had been elevated details, however, 
 which their own work among the Alps would hardly 
 support. 
 
 The winter months of 1829-30 were spent in London, 
 
1829-so.] THE EASTERN ALPS REVISITED. 163 
 
 where the duties of the Secretaryship of the Geological 
 Society, the preparation of his memoirs on the recent Con- 
 tinental tour, and the ordinary but increasing social 
 exigencies of his position, kept Murchison's hands fuller 
 than ever of work, though he still found now and then an 
 opportunity of escaping to the country to visit a friend and 
 have a few days' shooting. Indeed, it would seem from a 
 letter addressed to him in March that the old fox-hunting 
 Adam was not yet wholly cast out of him. 
 
 Nevertheless when summer had brought back sunshine 
 and flowers to the Alpine valleys, he determined to revisit 
 them. 
 
 On the appearance of the abstracts of their papers on the 
 Austrian and Bavarian Alps in the Proceedings of the 
 Geological Society, the views which Sedgwick and Murchi- 
 son had put forth were combated in British and foreign 
 journals, notably by Dr. Ami Boue. Before the publication 
 of their completed memoirs, the two fellow-labourers saw 
 clearly that to meet the objections which had been urged, it 
 would be necessary for one or both of them to revisit a few 
 of their sections, and to examine some of the new localities 
 which had been cited as adverse to their views. Murchison 
 gladly undertook this congenial task. Accordingly, early in 
 June he started with his wife, primarily for the purpose of 
 clearing up these difficulties, but also to see a little more of 
 German scenery and society as well as German geology and 
 geologists. 
 
 The tour lasted until the beginning of October, and em- 
 braced, besides the old ground, some parts of Europe which 
 he had not yet seen since he had taken to scientific pursuits. 
 Crossing to Ostend, and proceeding by Antwerp to Brussels 
 
164 SIR RODERICK MURCHISON. [isso. 
 
 and Namur, where he "was enraptured with Omalius 
 d'Halloy ;" Liege, where young Dumont, just beginning his 
 career, lent the traveller his services ; Cologne and Bonn 
 Murchison sped up the Ehine without any halt for geological 
 exploration. At that time he still " despised the old slaty 
 rocks/' though .before another year was over he was to begin 
 the forging of that chain which kept him to them for the 
 rest of his life. " I was then keen on one scent only, viz., 
 greensands, chalk, and tertiary," and it was to study these 
 rocks yet more fully that he had again set out for the eastern 
 Alps. 
 
 Instead, however, of striking at once into the mountains, 
 the travellers made a detour through Bavaria, passing by 
 Aschaffenburg, Bamberg, Bayreuth, and Eatisbon, to Vienna. 
 Every museum on the way was examined, and notes were 
 made of its contents in so far as they might throw light upon 
 the secondary rocks of the Alps and surrounding regions. 
 Every local geologist too seems to have been ferreted out 
 and pressed into service. At Bamberg, by good chance, a 
 name of more than local celebrity caught Murchison's eye 
 in the visitors' book at the inn. " I instantly rushed to 
 the museum," he writes, " where I introduced myself to the 
 great geologist to whom Humboldt and all Germany bowed 
 Leopold von Buch. We had at once a most interesting 
 colloquy on dolomitization and many of the recent discoveries. 
 The little vivacious man was then quite en tete with his 
 monograph of Ammonites. Though turned of sixty, he had 
 only of late begun to study organic remains, and at once he 
 was endeavouring to generalize and group these animals by 
 their sutures. I perceived at once how with all his great 
 qualities, he was irascible if any contemporary criticised him, 
 
1830.] TALK WITH METTERNICH. 165 
 
 and he was then in a particular rage about Buckland's 
 having omitted to state that the bear-caverns of Muggendorf 
 and Gailenreuth were in pure dolomite ! He had just under- 
 gone a severe penance, owing to his obstinacy in never 
 taking a guide. He was lost in a forest on a stormy night, 
 and passed the hours of darkness under a tree, with no protec- 
 tion but an umbrella which he then always carried. As he 
 got old, however, he threw even that aside, and braved wet 
 and cold in a plain black suit, and without any change of 
 garments." 1 
 
 At Vienna, besides museums, picture-galleries, and geolo- 
 gists, Murchison saw a good deal of " distinguished society," 
 for which to the end he had a special fondness. He renewed 
 his acquaintance with the Archduke John, dined with Lord 
 Cowley, ambassador at the Austrian Court, and had an oppor- 
 tunity of holding converse with Metternich. He has pre- 
 served a record of part of the conversation at the ambas- 
 sador's table. The talk had drifted into geology, and a lady 
 present the same who had been the heroine in the incident 
 at dinner in Messina (ante, p. 53) asked across the table a 
 question about science and the Mosaic record. " I naturally 
 had some difficulty in getting out of the dilemma, when 
 Metternich, taking up the cudgels, gave them to my surprise 
 a capital lecture, and quite to the purpose. On going into 
 the drawing-room after dinner, and on sitting down on the 
 sofa to converse with the great diplomatist who had over- 
 thrown Napoleon, I soon learnt how and where he obtained 
 
 1 It was not until further experience of Continental geology and 
 geologists that Murchison conceived that great respect for Leopold von 
 Buch which he used often to express in his later years, adding at the 
 same time a cordial recognition of what he conceived to be his own obli- 
 gations to the influence of the German geologist. 
 
166 SIR RODERICK MURCHISON. [isso. 
 
 his geological knowledge. ' You will not believe me (said 
 he) when I tell you that I love science more than politics. 
 In my early youth I took honours in scientific studies, and 
 intended to give up my life to such pursuits, and become a 
 Docteur-es-Arts et Sciences. But the French Revolution 
 startled all the old Austrian families, and my father insisted 
 on it that as I had a name to sustain, I must, for the good of 
 my country and the honour of my family, betake myself to 
 public life. So I was sent as an attache" to the embassy at 
 Paris. There, in the intervals of business, and when not 
 occupied in the study of the doings and character of 
 Napoleon, I was always an attendant at Cuvier's lectures. 
 The words of that great master have never been forgotten, 
 and hence my repetition of them, when I supported you at 
 table, and showed to my diplomatic friends the great 
 iisefulness of your science, for that is the only mode of ap- 
 proaching them.' 
 
 " In his conversation he showed that he had read and 
 thought much on this subject, and particularly on the 
 application of geology to the development of the mineral 
 wealth of Austria. He endeavoured to make me believe 
 that he was all in favour of a scientific meeting in Vienna 
 next year, following those of Hamburg, etc., which had 
 already taken place. He expressed his ardent hope that 
 the people would become more scientific, and hoped that I 
 would publish some work upon their country, and stir them 
 up a little. 
 
 " When I told the Archduke John afterwards of this 
 conversation of Metternich's, he said it was all fudge, and 
 merely intended to blind me !" 
 
 Breaking away at last from these attractions in the 
 
1830.] WORK IN THE EASTERN ALPS. 167 
 
 capital, Murchison betook himself to the serious work which 
 had been the main object of the journey. He had written 
 to Sedgwick that in order to prove their points he would, 
 if possible, " riddle these Alps in all directions" a resolu- 
 tion which he now proceeded to put in practice. Accom- 
 panied by Professor Paul Partsch, an active geologist of 
 Vienna, he made several minor excursions in the neigh- 
 bourhood, and then, striking through the Leitha Gebirge 
 as far as Gratz, turned back westwards into the Alps. 1 
 The wonderful little tertiary basins enclosed among the 
 older rocks of Carinthia, and sometimes furnishing thick 
 masses of lignite, first detained him. But the real hard 
 work lay among the mountains of the Salzkammergut and 
 Styria, the object being to clear up the relations of the 
 supposed tertiary strata of Gosau and the structure of the 
 secondary rocks of that part of Austria. In the state of 
 the science at the time, it was no wonder that Murchison, 
 though making out some new points in the structure of the 
 mountains, still missed the meaning of the curious and 
 puzzling assemblage of fossils at Gosau. Several weeks 
 of very hard work were spent in those regions, with the 
 result of confirming some main parts of the conjoint survey 
 of the previous year, and of showing the need to modify 
 others. From Ischl, in the midst of the rambling, he wrote 
 to Sedgwick : " 0, what would I give that our sketch of 
 the Alps was not out! I could make it so much more 
 perfect in details and sections. . . . All these points neces- 
 sarily involve important alterations in our sections, which I 
 
 1 Some excellent observations were made during this time on the age 
 of the older rocks of Carinthia. They have been recently referred to by 
 M. de Koniuck in his " Recherches sur les Animaux fossiles," 2de Partie, 
 1873, p. 2 (Sur les Fossiles Carboniferes de Bleiberg). 
 
168 SIR RODERICK MURCHISON. [im 
 
 hope have not been begun. After a great deal of hard work 
 I have relieved my mind from a world of anxiety, and am 
 now resting and thankful, and taking a vapour salt bath or 
 two, enjoying right worshipful high Vienna society, who 
 are all stewing themselves in salt here. I am at same 
 time working out the details of the upper beds (upper grits 
 and marlstones of the Alpen-kalk), which by a charming 
 accident I have got within half a mile here." 
 
 About three weeks later the same correspondent received 
 a further detailed narrative of geological exploits in a letter 
 dated from Sonthofen, and beginning thus : " Here I am, 
 sticking to my scent like a true fox-hound. Since I wrote 
 to you from Ischl I have done some marvellous good work. 
 I made out a fine range of the Gosau beds near that place. 
 ... At Hallein I found V. Lill all anxiety to see me. . . . 
 The moment I twigged certain secondary black fossils like 
 lias (in his den near the river), and ascertained that the 
 section was not above a six hours' excursion, the post-wagen 
 was ordered, and off we travelled. ... I soon made a most 
 clear and instructive section, with lias shells and sufficient 
 fossils to make out the case. . . . How I did pant and fag 
 on the north side of Untersberg, for which I had glorious 
 hot weather. I made four parallel transverse sections. I 
 think I have the whole thing now most clear : it is cer- 
 tainly a capital key." 
 
 "I set out with a heavy heart to cross 120 miles of 
 Bavarian pebbles, and exactly 100 back to Augsburg, in 
 order that I, Rod. I. M., should heal my pricking conscience 
 and that of my dear ' heilige freuud' Adam Sedgwick in re 
 'Sonthofen.' ... I natter myself I get to understand the 
 valley, but with devilish ado and many perplexities nay, 
 
1830.] NUREMBERG. 169 
 
 more than I ever encountered in my geological career. My 
 throw off occasioned a hearty malediction upon Herren 
 Sedgwick and Murchison, who as they drove up to Sont- 
 hofen last year passed through a certain archway leading 
 into that valley, with a rock close to them which they never 
 hammered. This I found to be true genuine old greensand. 
 . . . But when I came to go along the south flanks of the 
 Grinten, and ascend to the iron mines, all my precognosced 
 friends seemed to be sent topsy-turvy. What inversions 
 and contortions ! . . . I left no gorge nor any mountain 
 peak unexamined where I thought examination necessary." 
 
 Quitting at last these puzzling rocks on the flanks of 
 the Alps, he turned homeward by Munich, Nuremberg, 
 Gotha, and Gottingen. At Nuremberg he notes in his 
 journal " a change of scene : fossils and rocks were forgotten 
 for a day or two." Curiously enough, however, in the next 
 sentence he writes " A picture of Luther reminded me of 
 Buckland in his jolliest moments, while the pensive and 
 reflective Melanchthon is well represented in England by 
 Henry Warburton." In Gotha he " passed an evening with 
 the most remarkable man of the place, Von Hoff, whose 
 works on physical geography and geology proved afterwards 
 of such good service to Lyell." 
 
 On the 1st October Mr. and Mrs. Murchison set sail 
 from Eotterdam for London. And thus ended one of the 
 pleasantest of the continental rambles which they had yet 
 undertaken. They had accomplished the definite object 
 which had given point and aim to the journey, and had 
 besides seen much new country and made many new 
 acquaintances. The tour was, moreover, the last of this 
 early foreign series. The next nine years were to be em- 
 
170 SIR RODERICK MURCHISON. [isao-ai. 
 
 ployed at home in laying the foundations of that Silurian 
 system by which the name of Murchison will be chiefly 
 remembered in the history of geology. 
 
 Before we turn to that point of the narrative, the work 
 of the winter of 1830-31 remains to be very briefly noticed. 
 During the preceding three years Murchison had filled many 
 note-books with innumerable memoranda of sections, fossil 
 collections, excerpts from published descriptions and verbal 
 information, all bearing upon the geology of the secondary 
 rocks of Germany, The long and elaborate memoir of 
 Sedgwick and himself on the eastern Alps, still in the press, 
 would, when published, contain all the main points of their 
 work ; but many details remained which it seemed desirable 
 to publish, especially in so far as they might bear upon 
 English geology. To carry out this idea, and verify some 
 parts of the larger memoir, he went to Paris to compare a 
 collection of fossils from Germany, and partly, as he con- 
 fessed, " to frequent the society of scientific friends." With 
 Alexander von Humboldt, who happened to be there at the 
 time, he made acquaintance, and got from him much infor- 
 mation regarding some of the geological aspects of the great 
 geographer's travels. 
 
 How the foreign materials were produced at the Geo- 
 logical Society may be partly gathered from the subjoined 
 letter to his friend Sir Philip Egerton (28th January 1831) : 
 
 " I am quite vexed that I should fire off all my Alpine 
 crackers without your hearing the report of one. I finish 
 on Wednesday next, when the whole of the meeting-room 
 will be hung with sectional tapestry of the manufacture of 
 Lonsdale 1 and Co., magnified from my smaller designs. If, 
 
 1 The worthy Curator of the Society's collections. 
 
1831.] PAPERS AT GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 171 
 
 therefore, you have any intention of being in town for the 
 meeting of Parliament, being Friday, perhaps you can 
 accelerate your movements (particularly as it freezes hard), 
 and be with us ; otherwise you will miss a golden oppor- 
 tunity of learning how much deposit took place between the 
 periods of our English chalk and London clay, and through- 
 out such extensive regions that I verily believe our case 
 in Western Europe will prove to be the exception and not 
 the rule. Besides this, I will warm you with basaltic erup- 
 tions which, though they only show the tips of their noses, 
 have heaved up mountains of gneiss and granite against the 
 greensand series, setting it, and the tertiary strata above it, 
 all on end. 
 
 " I was out of town for a fortnight, shooting at Charles 
 Lefevre's, and at Up Park about the Christmas time, since 
 when I have been working like a slave, previous to quitting 
 office not with disgrace, however, as my friends are going 
 to vote me into the President's chair, in which case I shall 
 request you to be one of my councillors a post well befit- 
 ting so grave a senator. Our anniversary, when all the 
 jollification and election take place, is the 18th February 
 so you may bow to the Queen in the morning, and to me at 
 night." 
 
CHAPTER X. 
 
 THE INVASION OF GRAUWACKE. 
 
 FOR five years the Secretary of the Geological Society 
 had worked energetically for the Society's behoof, catering 
 for papers, arranging the reading and publication of them, 
 and preparing, either alone or in conjunction with the 
 Woodwardian Professor of Cambridge or Mr. Lyell, some 
 able memoirs on structural geology. He had earned a claim 
 to the Society's gratitude, which was acknowledged this 
 winter (February 1831) by his election to the dignity of 
 President. The chair had been previously filled by Sedg- 
 wick, who, on quitting it, concluded his address with these 
 words : " Mine has been indeed but an interrupted ser- 
 vice ; but I resign it to one of whose powers you have had 
 long experience, who can give them to you undivided, and 
 whose hands are in no respect less ready than my own." 
 
 The office is held for two years. How it was filled by 
 Murchison will be told in the next chapter. We have now 
 arrived at the great turning-point of his scientific life, and 
 must look at it with some care, that its bearings may be 
 clearly seen not only on his own career, but on the history 
 of geology. 
 
 Up to this time, his work in the field had lain almost 
 
1831.] THE TRANSITION ROCKS. 173 
 
 wholly among Secondary rocks, whether in this country or 
 abroad, insomuch that, as we have seen, the rocks of older date 
 seemed to him to wear a dry, forbidding aspect, no matter 
 where they might present themselves. But before the close 
 of the first session of his Presidency at the Geological Society 
 he had determined to look these old rocks steadily in the 
 face, and see what after all might be their meaning and 
 history. Every year brought fresh and often apparently con- 
 tradictory facts to light about them. They evidently deserved 
 to be studied, and would probably reward any adventurous 
 spirit who chose resolutely to grapple with their problems. 
 Murchison, at the instigation of Buckland and other friends, 
 made up his mind to try. 
 
 The labours which have now to be traced as they went 
 on year by year, have a far wider interest than merely their 
 relation to the life and work of the man by whom they 
 were conducted. They unquestionably established a notable 
 epoch in the progress of geology. They added a new chap- 
 ter to geological history. They have been of infinite service 
 in helping the interpretation of what are called the palaeo- 
 zoic rocks in every quarter of the world. To gain an ade- 
 quate notion of what they were and how they came to 
 acquire the importance now justly ascribed to them, we may 
 cast our eyes first of all, and very rapidly, over the know- 
 ledge, or rather the ignorance, which existed in this part of 
 geology before the date of Murchison's researches. 
 
 Over the centre and south of England the great series 
 of rocks now embraced under the term " Secondary" have 
 undergone comparatively little disturbance from those sub- 
 terranean movements which have in other regions heaved up 
 these same rocks into some of the loftiest mountain-chains 
 
174 SIR RODERICK MURCHISON. [mi. 
 
 upon the surface of the globe. They lie one upon the other 
 with almost the regularity of the shelves in a library. 
 Their story, therefore, when once the key to decipher it had 
 been given, was not difficult to read. The genius of William 
 Smith had supplied that key, and thus the investigation of 
 the Secondary rocks had made such enormous strides during 
 the previous fifteen or twenty years, that it seemed as if 
 little more could be done in that branch of geology, save to 
 elaborate details. Starting from the types of the undis- 
 turbed formations of England, men endeavoured by their 
 means to reduce into order the complicated structure of such 
 regions as the Alps. Among those who successfully essayed 
 such a task, Murchison had taken an honourable place. 
 
 But down below these Secondary rocks, and underneath 
 the Carboniferous and Old Red Sandstone deposits, the suc- 
 cession of which had been made out by William Smith, there 
 lay others, so hardened, squeezed, and broken as seemingly 
 to defy all attempts to classify them by the same minute and 
 detailed method. Such rocks stretched over most of Wales, of 
 Devon and Cornwall, of the Lake Country, and of the uplands 
 of the south of Scotland. They covered wide spaces on the 
 Continent, as for instance in Scandinavia, Rhineland, and 
 Bohemia. It was known that they must be enormously thick. 
 From year to year an increasing number of the remains of 
 corals, crinoids, shells, and other organisms was reported 
 from them. Evidently, therefore, they did not all date from 
 a time anterior to the introduction of life upon the earth. 
 
 Many were the names given to this vast and hetero- 
 geneous series of rocks. That proposed by Werner had met 
 with the widest acceptance, viz., Transition a name which 
 implied the theory that these rocks had been formed at a 
 
i3i.] HISTORY OF TRANSITION ROCKS. 173 
 
 period of the world's history transitional between a time 
 when rocks were laid down all over the globe by chemical 
 precipitation from a hot ocean, and a time when conditions 
 more like those at present in force permitted of the exist- 
 ence of living creatures upon the earth. 
 
 Another appellation which had been very generally applied 
 to these old rocks was "grauwacke" an uncouth word origin- 
 ally used by the Harz miners for a special kind of rock in 
 
 CHARACTERISTIC FOSSILS FROM THE GRAUWACKE (LLANDEILO FLAGS). 
 
 1-10. Trilobites. 1. Asaphus tyrannus. 2. Ogygia Buchii. 3. O. Portlockii. 4. Stygina 
 MurchisoniK. 5. Agnostus Maccoyii. 6. Trinueleus fimbriatus. 7. T. Lloydii. 8. T. con- 
 centricus. 9. Calymene brevicapitata. 10. C. duplicata. 10. Beyrichia complicate. 11. Grap- 
 tolithus Beckii. 12. G. tenuis. 13. Didymograpsus Murchisonii. 14. Diplograpsus tere- 
 tiusculus. 15. Orthis alata. 16. O. striatula. 17. Siphonotreta micula. 18. Lingula 
 attenuate. 19. L. granulate. 20. L. Ramsayi. 21. Theca reversa. 22. Monticulipora favulosa. 
 
 the Transition series, and gradually adopted as a convenient 
 name for a great part of the most ancient stratified masses. 
 But though often used as if it signified a particular division 
 of geological time, grauwacke was really the name of a par- 
 ticular rock, and hence wherever that rock occurred, the 
 name might be legitimately given to it, without reference to 
 respective age, or under the mistaken impression that all 
 grauwacke was of the same general geological date. 
 
176 SIR RODERICK MURCHISON. [issi. 
 
 Under such vaguely applied names, rocks of vastly differ- 
 ent ages and characters were incongruously grouped together. 
 Hence they presented so many contradictions and difficulties 
 that geologists on the whole avoided them as much as possible. 
 Murchison only reflected the common dislike of them when 
 he hurried through the Ehine provinces to get away from 
 what he called the " interminable grauwacke." Writers of 
 text-books were sorely puzzled how to marshal the few 
 discordant facts which were already known on the subject. 
 Fanciful theory and mere trim naineralogical distinctions 
 often supplied the place of geological knowledge. 1 
 
 1 No better illustration could be obtained of the state of this part of 
 geological science at the time than the fact that the Principles of Geo- 
 logy of Lyell, while devoting about 300 pages to the Tertiary deposits, 
 dismissed all fossiliferous rocks older than those above the coal-measures 
 in twelve lines. (Principles, vol. iii., published in the spring of 1833, and 
 dedicated to Murchison.) The account there given of these rocks does 
 not pretend to be more than a reference, but it may be quoted here as a 
 curious commentary on the state of ignorance which prevailed at the time 
 regarding the Palaeozoic rocks : 
 
 " 6. Carboniferous Group, comprising the coal measures, the mountain lime- 
 stone, the old red sandstone, the transition limestone, the coarse slates and slaty 
 sandstones called graywacke by some writers, and other associated rocks. 
 
 " The mountain and transition limestones of the English geologists 
 contain many of the same species of shells in common, and we shall there- 
 fore refer them for the present to the same great period ; and consequently 
 the coal, which alternates in some districts with mountain limestone, and 
 the old red sandstone, which intervenes between the mountain and tran- 
 sition limestones, will be considered as belonging to the same period. 
 The coal-bearing strata are characterized by several hundred species of 
 plants, which serve very distinctly to mark the vegetation of part of this 
 era. Some of the rocks, termed graywacke in Germany, are connected by 
 their fossils with the mountain limestone." 
 
 The third edition of a popular English geological text-book Bake- 
 well's Introduction to Geology appeared in the year 1828, and contained 
 the following table of the rocks now referred to : 
 
 " TRANSITION CLASS (Conformable). 
 
 "1. Slate, including flinty slate and other varieties. 
 
 2. Greywacke and greywacke slate, passing into old red sandstone. 
 
 3. Transition limestone. Mountain limestone." 
 
 In the third edition of the excellent Geological Manual of the late Sir 
 
1831.] HISTORY OF TRANSITION ROCKS. 177 
 
 When we consider the extremely perplexing character 
 of the geology of many of the districts where these old 
 rocks occur, we cannot wonder that they should have 
 continued to be a stumbling-block in the progress of the 
 science. The key furnished by William Smith for the 
 secondary rocks might not have been found for many years 
 later, if these strata had lain less regularly in England 
 than they do. To men who came fresh from such undis- 
 turbed deposits to the contorted, fractured, and hardened 
 older rocks, it must have seemed well-nigh a hopeless task 
 to reduce the apparent chaos to order. Professor Sedgwick, 
 
 Henry De la Beche, all the fossiliferous rocks under the old red sandstone 
 are thrown into the " Grauwacke Group," which is described as "a large 
 stratified mass of arenaceous and slaty rocks, intermingled with patches 
 of limestone, which are often continuous for considerable distances. The 
 arenaceoiis and slate-beds, considered generally, bear evident marks of 
 mechanical origin, but that of the included limestones may be more ques- 
 tionable." The fossiliferous character of the group is insisted on, and 126 
 genera and 547 species of fossils are enumerated from the grauwacke rocks 
 of this and foreign countries. When, however, we look into these fossil 
 lists, we find that a large number of species belong to rocks which are 
 now placed on the hori/on of the old red sandstone or Devonian system, 
 and that others have been inserted which should have been placed on the 
 still higher horizon of the carboniferous limestone. The confusion of the 
 lists is only a faithful reflex of the utter confusion in which the strati- 
 graphy of the rocks themselves still lay. 
 
 Even as late as the year 1832, after Sedgwick had published his views 
 as to the structure of the transition rocks of the Cumberland district, and 
 after Murchison had made known the distinct order of succession in the 
 upper portions of these rocks around the Welsh border, the able and well- 
 informed Conybeare could report to the British Association but a meagre 
 statement of the scanty knowledge then obtained on this part of British 
 geology, and is found gravely discussing the " need of a term less barbar- 
 ous than grauwacke-slate, which would conveniently denominate the 
 characteristic rock of this era. Might not clasmoschist (from the Greek 
 K\aa-pa) be conveniently adopted ? It would afford a term well contrasted 
 to mica-schist, the characteristic rock of the primitive group. " (Brit. 
 Assoc. Reports, vol. i. p. 382. 
 
 On the Continent the ignorance was quite as dense as here, although, 
 appearing under the guise of hard names and neatly arranged tables, it 
 
 VOL. I. M 
 
178 SIR RODERICK MURCHISON. [isa. 
 
 indeed, nine years before the time at which we are arrived, 
 viz., as far back as 1822, had begun to grapple with the 
 rocks of his Cumbrian mountains, and, in spite of their 
 broken and contorted character, was slowly unravelling 
 their structure. But no amount of labour or skill in that 
 region could possibly connect the history of the Transition 
 rocks with that of the younger strata by which they are 
 covered; for a great gap occurs there in the geological 
 record, which is thus rendered as imperfect as a historical 
 narrative would be if several important chapters were torn 
 out of it and destroyed. A similar hiatus had been so fre- 
 quently observed elsewhere that the notion had become 
 general that the so-called " Transition " rocks belonged to 
 a totally different and distinct order of things, and that they 
 had been fractured and upheaved before any of the Second- 
 ary formations were laid down upon them. 
 
 Any attempts which had been made to subdivide the 
 Transition series, and to connect those of one country with 
 those of another, had been based hitherto wholly on the 
 
 might have passed for exact knowledge. Thus the Eltonem de Geologic 
 of J. d'Omalius d'Halloy, offered the subjoined table to its readers as 
 showing the most advanced views in the year 1831 : 
 
 / Terrain houiller. 
 
 i Calcareux [mountain limestone, 30 
 Superieur, } species of fossils given]. 
 
 ( Quartzo-schisteux [9 species]. 
 
 Terrain anthraxifere, . ^ , , . -, 
 
 ( Galcareux [7 species]. 
 
 Infdrieur, < Quartzo-schisteux [old red sand- 
 
 (. stone, 1 species]. 
 
 / Schisteux. 
 
 I Quartzeux. 
 
 H Terrain ardoisier, ( [This series includes the grauwacke. Fossils 
 
 rare and indistinct, belong chiefly to 
 trilobites, spirifers, and encrinites.] 
 
mi.] HISTORY OF TRANSITION ROCKS. 179 
 
 mineralogical characters of the strata. But these characters, 
 as is now well known, afford no sufficient test of geological 
 age and position, the grauwackes and shales of one age 
 being often in that respect undistinguishable from those of 
 another. Besides, even when used in reference to one 
 continuous series of rocks, though often most convenient 
 and useful, they are liable to constant and rapid changes. 
 They could not, therefore, be safely relied upon for a sound 
 and generally applicable classification, such as had been 
 established by means of fossil evidence among the overlying 
 formations. 
 
 And yet the transition rocks were far from being desti- 
 tute of fossils. 1 These were to be had sometimes in great 
 abundance. They seemed to be in the main of peculiar 
 species, not found in the overlying strata. Hence it was 
 evident that before any use could be made of the fossils 
 in the way of grouping the rocks into divisions, the very 
 order of succession among these rocks had first to be settled. 
 But no one who had hitherto addressed himself to this task 
 had been able to establish as a basis for paleeontological 
 work any broad and serviceable divisions among the old 
 grauwacke, or to connect it satisfactorily with the formations 
 
 1 Their fossiliferous character had been noted by Werner. In England 
 fossils had been found by William Smith and Mr. Phillips in the upper- 
 most Transition rocks of Westmoreland. These specimens were shown to 
 Sedgwick in 1822, and slightly described by him in his paper on Craven 
 in 1827. The fossiliferous character of some parts of the Transition 
 series of Shropshire and Wales was likewise well known, though no one 
 seems to have set about determining what the fossils were, and how far 
 they agreed with or differed from those of the overlying formations. 
 "Practically," to quote from some notes obligingly furnished by Pro- 
 fessor Phillips, " before the summer of 1831 the whole field of the ancient 
 rocks and fossils of Wales was unexplored ; but then arose two men 
 par nobile, of all men fitted for the purpose Sedgwick and Murchison 
 and simultaneously set to work to cultivate what had been left a desert." 
 
180 SIR RODERICK MURCH1SOX. [isn. 
 
 which succeeded it in time. So broken indeed and altered 
 was it that if any one had proposed to apply to this puzzling 
 old transition or grauwacke series the same tests by which 
 the secondary and tertiary deposits had been brought into 
 such clear and intelligible order, he would have raised a 
 smile among his geological friends. Murchison knew of 
 course no more about these ancient formations than his 
 neighbours, but he now resolved with his characteristic 
 energy and enthusiasm to see what he could make of them. 
 
 At the end of the session of the Geological Society he 
 started from Bryanston Square with his " wife and maid, 
 two good grey nags and a little carriage, saddles being 
 strapped behind for occasional equestrian use." Some 
 preliminary skirmishing took place among the secondary 
 and tertiary rocks by the way, for he could not resist the 
 sight of a quarry or pit, being resolved to miss nothing on 
 the road. The route lay by Oxford, where his old friend 
 and preceptor Buckland received him, and led him over 
 some of the ground where he had formerly received his 
 earliest lessons in field geology. But it was not merely to 
 renew old acquaintance that a halt was made at Oxford. 
 " I took notes from Dr. Buckland," he writes, " of all that 
 he knew of the slaty rocks, or grauwacke as it was then 
 called, which succeeded to the Old Eed Sandstone, and the 
 relations of which I was determined to begin to unravel ; 
 and I recollect that he then told me that he thought I 
 would find a good illustration of the succession or passage 
 on the banks of the Wye east of Builth." 
 
 This laudable custom of collecting all available infor- 
 mation, published or unpublished, regarding any piece of 
 geology, before himself attacking it, has already been fre- 
 
1831.] BEGINS WORK IN THE GRAUWACKE. 181 
 
 quently apparent in the preceding narrative. It came 
 forward prominently enough at the commencement of this 
 new and momentous enterprise. He had already made 
 notes in London, while Dr. Buckland furnished him with 
 new and valuable suggestions. Quitting Oxford, he jour- 
 neyed westward to visit the Eev. W. D. Conybeare, a name 
 honourable in the history of geology as that of one of the 
 joint authors of the Geology of England and Wales. 
 From this kind and experienced friend he notes that he 
 obtained " some good advice." Other local observers, who, 
 though not aspiring to be called geologists, had been in the 
 habit of looking at the rocks and fossils of their neigh- 
 bourhood, gave him invaluable assistance. Among these 
 helpers may be mentioned Dr. Dugard of Shrewsbury, Mr. 
 Anstice of Madely, Dr. Lloyd of Ludlow, Mr. Davies of 
 Llandovery, and above all the Eev. T. T. Lewis of Aymestry. 
 From the first these friends enlisted readily in his service, 
 and some of them continued their unremitting toil and kind- 
 ness for years. To Mr. Lewis especially he was indebted 
 for much of his knowledge of the rocks and fossils of the 
 upper Silurian series, for that gentleman had made out the 
 arrangement of the rocks in his district, and recognised their 
 characteristic fossils before Murchison had begun to study 
 the subject. 
 
 On first taking the field this year Murchison had spent 
 some time in a desultory series of visits to country friends 
 and rambles after Secondary strata. His companion during 
 a portion of the time was Mr. Phillips, who has given the 
 following notes of the journey : " In the cool spring-time of 
 1831 we met by appointment at Staneford, and explored 
 together the district of Collyweston and Ketton. It was 
 
182 &IR RODERICK MURCHISON. [mi. 
 
 a pleasant walk along the high grounds overlooking the 
 Willand ; cigars contending with endless discussions on the 
 rocks around us, and on their relationships to Alpine lime- 
 stones which had begun to be recognised. We made care- 
 ful measures of the slaty and sandy beds full of shells which 
 here overlie the ironstone and the lias, and intended to give 
 a joint memoir as to their position and numerous fossil con- 
 tents. Collyweston has been again and again visited by me, 
 but not I think by Murchison, who in that year had his 
 attention drawn to a larger field of work, and began to dream 
 of Siluria." 
 
 The dream was soon to become a reality. For, crossing at 
 last to Swansea, Murchison struck northwards into the hills 
 beyond the coal-field, and there began to invade the Tran- 
 sition rocks of South Wales. These hills consist of the 
 Carboniferous Limestone rising out from under the Coal 
 measures and resting upon thick masses of Old Eed Sand- 
 stone, so that when one crosses the high ground and 
 descends into the lower regions towards the north, one comes 
 upon lower and lower strata cropping up from beneath the 
 Old Eed Sandstone, and spreading for many a league over 
 the undulating country to right and left and in front. It 
 was near the town of Llandeilo that Murchison first broke 
 into these older rocks with the purpose of making them dis- 
 close their true place and order in the geological series. 
 
 " Travelling from Brecon to Builth by the Herefordshire 
 road, the gorge in which the Wye flows first developed 
 what I had not till then seen. Low terrace-shaped ridges 
 of grey rock dipping slightly to the south-east appeared on 
 the opposite bank of the Wye, and seemed to rise out quite 
 conformably from beneath the Old Eed of Herefordshire. 
 
1831.] BREAKS GROUND IN SOUTH WALES. 183 
 
 Boating across the river at Cavansham Ferry, I rushed up 
 to these ridges, and to my inexpressible joy found them 
 replete with transition fossils, afterwards identified with 
 those at Ludlow. Here then was a key, and if I could 
 only follow this out on the strike of the beds to the north- 
 east the case would be good." 
 
 To and fro through the Welsh and border counties he 
 worked his way as the rocks led him northwards over hill 
 and valley into the plains of Cheshire. The expedition was 
 
 Vale of the Towy, from near Llandeilo. (Sketched by Mrs. Murehison ) 
 
 far more successful than he had dreamed it could be, for, by 
 a happy accident, he had stumbled upon some of the few 
 natural sections where the order of the upper parts of the 
 transition rocks in Britain can be readily perceived, and 
 where their strata can be traced passing up into the over- 
 lying formations. No one could better appreciate the value 
 of this "find" than the fortunate geologist himself. " For 
 a first survey," he writes, " I had got the upper grauwacke, 
 so called, into my hands, for I had seen it in several situa- 
 tions far from each other all along the South Welsh frontier, 
 
184 SIR RODERICK MURCHISON. [issi. 
 
 and in Shropshire and Herefordshire, rising out gradually 
 and conformably from beneath the lowest member of the old 
 red sandstone. Moreover, I had ascertained that its different 
 beds were characterized by peculiar fossils. I had, therefore, 
 quite enough on hand to enable me to appear at the first 
 meeting of the British Association, which I had promised to 
 join at York in October, with a good broad announcement 
 of a new step in British geology." 
 
 His notes, however, show that he did not rush at once 
 from the grauwacke to the York assembly, but journeyed 
 so leisurely as to pay many visits to old north- country 
 friends, and to fill up long pages of jottings by the way on 
 the geology of the region between the hills of Wales and 
 the sea-coast of Durham. At last, the same " pair of greys" 
 which had carried the two travellers from London all through 
 the Welsh border, and the midland and northern counties, 
 deposited Mr. and Mrs. Murchison at the hospitable gates of 
 Bishopthorpe, where they remained as guests of the Arch- 
 bishop during the first meeting of the British Association. 
 Of that memorable meeting, so important an event in the 
 history of science in this country, Mnrchison has preserved 
 the following recollections : 
 
 " FIRST MEETING OF THE BRITISH ASSOCIATION AT YORK, 
 27th September to 3d October 1831. 
 
 " This first gathering of men of science to give a more 
 systematic direction to their researches, to gather funds for 
 carrying out analyses and inquiries, to gain strength and 
 influence by union, and to make their voice tell in all those 
 public affairs in which science ought to tell, came about in 
 this wise : Assemblies of ' Naturforscher' had been for two 
 
FIRST MEETING OF BRITISH ASSOCIATION. 185 
 
 years or more in existence in Germany, having begun in 
 Hamburg. Thereon Sir D. Brewster wrote an article in 
 the Edinburgh Philosophical Journal suggesting that such a 
 meeting should be tried in Britain. On this the Eev. Wil- 
 liam Vernon (afterwards Vernon Harcourt), the third son of 
 the Archbishop of York, and a Prebendary of York, not only 
 made the real beginning by proposing that we should meet 
 at York, but by engaging his father to act as a Patron, and 
 by inducing Earl Fitzwilliam to be the President, he gave at 
 once a locus standi and respectability to the project. But 
 he did much more ; for he elaborated a constitution of that 
 which he considered might become a Parliament of Science, 
 such as Bacon had imagined, and was thus our lawgiver. 
 
 " The project thus elaborated having been transmitted 
 to me in London in the spring of 1831, when I was President 
 of the Geological Society, I at once eagerly supported it. 
 Nay, more, I wrote and lithographed an appeal to all my 
 scientific friends, particularly the geologists, urging them to 
 join this new Association. But notwithstanding my energy, 
 the scheme was for the most part pooh-poohed, and, among my 
 own associates, I only induced Mr. Greenough, Dr. Daubeny, 
 Sir Philip Egerton, and Mr. Yates, to follow suit. John Phillips 
 of York, the nephew of William Smith, and the Curator of 
 the York Museum, had very much to do in the origin of 
 this concern, for he co-operated warmly with William Vernon, 
 and, when we got together at York, was the secretary and 
 factotum. He had previously corresponded with me in Lon- 
 don, and stimulated me with a ready-made prospectus. I may 
 say that it was the cheerful and engaging manners of young 
 Phillips that went far in cementing us ; and even then he 
 gave signs of the eminence to which he afterwards arose 
 
186 SIR RODERICK MURCHISON. [isai. 
 
 in the numerous years in which he was the most efficient 
 assistant-general-secretary of the body, until when, as the 
 distinguished Eeader of Geology in the University of Oxford, 
 he presided over the British Association at Birmingham. 
 
 "When/however, we were congregated from all parts, the 
 feebleness of the body scientific was too apparent. From 
 London we had no strong men of other branches of science, 
 and I was but a young President of the geologists; from 
 Cambridge no one, but apologies from Whewell, Sedgwick, 1 
 and others ; from Oxford we had Daubeny only, with apo- 
 logies from Buckland and others. On the other hand, we 
 had the Provost of Trinity College, Dublin, Dr. Lloyd, Dr. 
 Dalton, from Manchester, and Sir David Brewster from 
 Edinburgh. Thus there was just a nucleus which, if well 
 managed, might roll on to be a large ball And admirably 
 was it conducted by William Vernon, for, after opening the 
 meeting in an earnest, solemn manner, the good Lord Fitz- 
 william handed over the whole control to Harcourt and 
 left us. 
 
 " On my own part I had plenty of matter wherewith to 
 keep my geological section alive, as, besides those I have 
 mentioned, we had a tower of strength in old William Smith, 
 the Father of English Geology, and then resident at Scar- 
 borough; James Forbes, Tom Allan the mineralogist, and 
 
 1 " Sedgwick indeed sent his apology through me, in a letter from Llan- 
 fyllin. It was his dkut among the North Welsh rocks. ' Cracking the 
 rocks of Carnarvonshire for three weeks, and getting fond of the sport,' 
 he writes, ' I should be a traitor to quit my post now that I am keeping 
 watch among the mountains. It would be very delightful to mingle 
 among the philosophers and commence deipnosophist, but it would be 
 very bad philosophy in the long-run. You may tell Mr. W. Vernon 
 that keeping away is a great act of self-denial on my part, and that I am 
 in fact doing their work by staying away.' " 
 
FIRST MEETING OF BRITISH ASSOCIATION. 187 
 
 Johnston the chemist from Edinburgh, to say nothing of 
 Harry Witham of Lartington (now an author on fossil flora), 
 and others, including William Hutton of Newcastle-on-Tyne, 
 then strong upon his ' whin-sill/ After all, however, we 
 were but a meagre squad to represent British science, and I 
 never felt humbler in my life than when Harcourt, in his 
 opening address, referred to me as representing London ! 
 
 " Indeed, William Conybeare, afterwards Dean of Llan- 
 daff, had quizzed us unmercifully, as well as W. Broderip 
 and Stokes, and other men of science. The first of these had 
 said, that if a central part of England were chosen for the 
 meeting, and the science of London and the south were to be 
 weighed against the science of the North, the meeting ought 
 to be held in the Zoological Gardens of the Eegent's Park ! 
 It required, therefore, no little pluck to fight up against all 
 this opposition, and all I can claim credit for is, that I was a 
 hearty supporter of the scheme cotite que codte. 1 
 
 " This first gathering was in short much like what takes 
 place at small Continental meetings we had no regular 
 sections, but worked on harmoniously with our small force 
 in cumulo. The excellent Archbishop was of great social 
 use, and gave a dignity to the proceedings, whilst Lord Mor- 
 peth, then the young member for Yorkshire, incited us by 
 speeches as to our future. It was then and there resolved 
 that we were ever to be Provincials. Old Dalton insisted on 
 
 1 As an illustration of the kind of taunts amid which the British Asso- 
 ciation was born, the following sentence may be quoted from a letter 
 written by J. G. Lockhart, editor of the Quarterly Review, to Murchisou 
 just before the meeting : " I presume you are going to the colt-show at 
 York. Don't make a fool of yourself among these twaddlers, who must, in 
 such strength of re-union (considering what happens in all their minor 
 associations), be enough to disturb the temper, if not brains, of the 
 (ro^)coraroi, of which number is of course the P. G. S. L." 
 
188 SIR RODERICK MURCHISON. [MSI. 
 
 this saying that we should lose all the object of diffusing 
 knowledge if we ever met in the Metropolis. 
 
 " With all our efforts, however, we might never have suc- 
 ceeded had not my dear friend Dr. Daubeny boldly sug- 
 gested (and he had no authority whatever) that we should 
 hold our second meeting in the University of Oxford ! ! It 
 was that second meeting which consolidated us, and enabled 
 us to take up a proper position. Then it was that, seeing 
 the thing was going to succeed, the men of science of the metro- 
 polis and those of the universities joined us." 
 
 A letter written by Murchison from York, towards the 
 close of the meeting, to Dr. Whewell, gives a glimpse of the 
 enthusiasm with which some of the fellow-labourers worked 
 for the Association : 
 
 " Before I entered into the ' British Association ' which 
 the meeting at York has given rise to, I was very desirous 
 of weighing the men who were eventually to carry us through. 
 I was really very mainly induced to join it in consequence 
 of your letter to "William Vernon, and I was quite decided 
 in so doing when I saw the calibre of the men he had 
 assembled, and the promises of support from those who 
 could not attend. , , . Brewster really astonished every one 
 with the brilliancy of his new lights, old Dalton, ' atomic 
 Dalton,' reading his own memoirs, and replying with 
 straightforward pertinacity to every objection in the highly 
 instructive conversations which followed each paper. . . . 
 I had no memoir ready myself, and did not intend to rob the 
 Geological Society of anything intended for them, but I 
 found that a poor and hard-working druggist of Preston, 1 
 
 1 Mr. W. Gilbertson (see Brit. Assoc. Hep., 1831-2, p. 82). The shells 
 referred to are in the museum of the Geological Society. 
 
FIRST MEETING OF BRITISH ASSOCIATION. 189 
 
 Lancashire, who had made some years ago a very important 
 observation on the existence of shells of existing species in 
 the gravels and marls of Lancashire at 300 feet above the 
 sea, and at distances of fifteen and twenty miles from the 
 sea, was present. I took the opportunity of turning lecturer, 
 and having visited those parts this summer, I brought out 
 my little druggist with all the e*clat he merited. This is 
 another practical exemplification of the good arising from such 
 a reunion. The Archbishop had all the party on one of the 
 days, and it would have gratified the liberality of Cambridge 
 to have seen old Quaker Dalton on his Grace's right hand. 
 Pray act cordially with us, and if Adam [Sedgwick], my great 
 master, and yourself will only go along with us, the third 
 meeting will unquestionably be at Cambridge. Rely on it, 
 the thing must progress, all the good men and true here 
 present are resolved to make it do so." 
 
 Fresh from the field, Murchison had not had time to pre- 
 pare any important paper to inaugurate the birth of the new 
 Association. But besides bringing forward the finder of the 
 Lancashire shells, he took the opportunity of showing the 
 general nature and tendency of his recent work, by hanging 
 up the maps which he had used that summer in his tour, and 
 on which he had coloured " the Transition Rocks, the Old 
 Red Sandstone, and Carboniferous Limestone," etc., an ex - 
 hibition of interest to geologists, since it was the first which 
 gave promise that the uncertainty of the true relations of 
 the Transition rocks to the later formations was now at 
 length to be dispelled. 
 
 At the close of the meeting the " pair of greys," which 
 had done such good service already, were again in requisition 
 
 1 British Association Reports, vol. i. p. 91. 
 
190 SIR RODERICK MURCHISON. [issi. 
 
 to transport the travellers to the east coast. There, at 
 Scarborough and its neighbourhood, Murchison once more 
 availed himself of the ever ready co-operation of the illustrious 
 " Father of English Geology," and renewed his acquaintance 
 with the rocks of that interesting coast line. In a letter 
 written at that time to Mr. Phillips, he reports the first 
 germ of a proposal which in its completed form did honour 
 to the men who made it, and to the Government which 
 carried it into execution. It was one of the earliest of a long 
 series of kind-hearted acts to meritorious but often poor men 
 of science acts which, if they had not Murchison for their 
 originator, never failed to find in him an active and influential 
 supporter. We can picture him among these Yorkshire cliffs, 
 with the kindly old man, who, though he had done more for 
 geology than any man then living, was spending the re- 
 mainder of his days in humble quiet at Scarborough. And 
 those who knew Murchison will recognise how well fitted 
 this sight was to touch him into active and considerate 
 benevolence. 
 
 " I have had a nice field-day with your uncle at Hack- 
 ness. What is your opinion, your real opinion, as to what 
 / or my friends could really do for him (i.e. for his benefit ) ? 
 It would never do to bring him to town without something 
 sure and good was offered. If we could persuade the 
 Government to give him a little salary to be geological 
 colourer of the Ordnance Maps published do you think I 
 ought to suggest this ? I ask this as a preliminary : it 
 would certainly be of national importance to have these well 
 done, and lodged in the Tower and Geological Society." 
 
 This proposal, as we shall see, was not a mere matter 
 of form or of transient good-will. But before any further 
 

 W11.UA.M SMITH. l.l;.l> 
 
 I', '"in ,/ Portrait '>.</ Foureaw 
 
m.] SEDGWICK' S FIRST WORK AY WALES. 191 
 
 action could be taken, the writer of it had to find his way 
 back to London. This he did in the usual circuitous way 
 which a geologist chooses, travelling through Lincolnshire 
 and Norfolk in search of geological sections. While at 
 Norwich he received from his friend Whewell a pressing 
 invitation to visit Cambridge on the homeward journey, and 
 as part of the attraction, was told that " You will find 
 Sedgwick full to the teeth with Welsh porphyry and grau- 
 wacke, and shall hear the legend of his fight with some of 
 the old spirits of the mountains, who made a great resistance 
 to the process of being geologized an operation for which 
 there is no name I believe in any of the dialects of the Gaelic ; 
 but you know best." It was a curious coincidence that the 
 two brother geologists should each independently have 
 broken ground in Wales in the same year. 1 Sedgwick 
 unfortunately had begun the attack in a region of great 
 complication, Murchison, on the other hand, had been lucky 
 enough to begin in one of comparatively easy comprehension. 
 This accidental difference indirectly led the way to that sad 
 estrangement which remains to be told in future chapters. 
 This had been in many ways a busy and important year 
 
 1 The following extract from a letter of Sedgwick's to Murchison, 20th 
 October 1831, gives us an interesting glimpse into the state of the work 
 when the eager Woodwardian Professor began it in North Wales : 
 " The weather became so bad that I was driven out of Carnarvonshire 
 before I had quite finished my work ; but, God willing, I hope to be in 
 North Wales next year before the expiration of the first week in May, 
 and with five months before me, I shall perhaps be able to see my way 
 through the greater part of the Principality. If I live to finish the sur- 
 vey, I shall have terminated my seventh or eighth summer devoted exclu- 
 sively to the details of the old crusty rocks of the primary system. What 
 a horrible fraction of a geological life sacrificed to the most toilsome and 
 irksome investigations belonging to our science ! When I finished Cumber- 
 land I hoped some one else would have done North Wales, but I have 
 been disappointed. N\mporte. I am now in for it, and must go on." 
 
192 SIR RODERICK MURCHISON. [IBM. 
 
 in Murchison's career. He writes of it thus : " In sum- 
 ming up what I saw and what I realized in the summer of 
 1831, or in about four months of travelling, I may say that 
 it was the most fruitful year of my life, for in it I laid the 
 foundation of my Silurian System. I was then thirty-nine 
 years old, and few could excel me in bodily and mental 
 activity. 'Omnia vincit labor' was my motto then, and I 
 have always stuck to it since." 
 
CHAPTEE XL 
 
 THE CHAIR OF THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY, AND SOCIAL 
 LIFE IN LONDON. 
 
 WHEN once more back at his post in London, it was one 
 of Murchison's first cares to prosecute further the scheme 
 for doing honour to William Smith. How his plan pros- 
 pered is best told in his own words, as written at the time to 
 Mr. Phillips : " You know all my heart's desire for our 
 good old father in geology. I propounded the same (as 
 expressed to you) to the Council of the Geological Society 
 at our first meeting in November, and I only waited for the 
 gathering of the men of office to sound Lord Morpeth on the 
 feasibility of my plan, and, if approved of by him, then to 
 throw in a strong memorial to the Government. Judge of 
 my delight then, when I found that Lord Morpeth had 
 anticipated my wishes, and had already written to Lord 
 Lansdowne, arguing Smith's merits, and asking for a small 
 pension. This application I was asked to second, which I 
 have done by letter a few days ago to Lord Lans- 
 downe ; but in doing this I have deviated so far from the 
 original request, as to point out to Lord L. that Mr. 
 Smith was still capable of doing the State good service. I 
 VOL. i. N 
 
194 8IR RODERICK MURCHISON. [mi. 
 
 went into an expos6 of the whole thing, and proposed the 
 creation of a new appointment, with some such title as 
 ' Geological Colourer of the Ordnance Maps ' thereby 
 meeting all the objections and criticisms of the Humists 
 which might be directed against sinecure places or pensions, 
 but which could not hold good with respect to an office so 
 connected with the development of the mineral wealth of 
 the country as that which I have suggested. We shall see 
 what the Lords will do, and in the meantime we had better 
 say nothing of it to Smith." 
 
 They had not a long time to wait, for the Government 
 granted the venerable geologist a pension of 100 a year 
 without stipulating that he should colour any Ordnance 
 maps. 1 
 
 His position as President of the Geological Society 
 required Murchison's presence in London during winter, 
 even if his enthusiasm for the science and devotion to the 
 Society had not been amply enough to insure his attendance. 
 He might well be proud of the choice which the Society had 
 made. Thirty years later a friend of his referred to him at 
 one of the anniversaries of the Society as a man " born to fill 
 chairs." During that busy interval he certainly merited 
 the description. But in 1831 he sat for the first time as a 
 leader among his scientific brethren, in the chair which had 
 been held by such men as Greenough, Macculloch, Buckland, 
 and Sedgwick. 
 
 It was always a great object with Murchison, as Presi- 
 dent, to get what he called " a good meeting," that is, one 
 with interesting papers attracting a full audience, and calling 
 
 1 For particulars of this incident, see Professor Phillips' interesting 
 Life of William Smith, p. 117. 
 
is3i.] PRESIDENT OF GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 195 
 
 out a brisk discussion. In his letters to friends in the 
 country at this time the doings at the Society usually figure 
 largely. For instance, writing to Dr. Whewell on the 1 7th 
 November he says : " We had a capital meeting last night. 
 1st, A memoir on the gigantic Plesio of Scarborough. 
 2d, Old Montlosier on Vesuvius, which drew out a long 
 and lucid explanation from Necker de Saussure; Lyell, 
 Buckland, Fitton, Greenough, De la Beche, and others 
 being orators. Buckland filled up all the parts wanting in 
 the Plesio, and perfected a monster for those who in a 
 snowy November night were disposed to nightmare." 
 
 Certainly in those days the meetings of the Geological 
 Society must have been among the most enjoyable gather- 
 ings in London. There was a freshness about the young 
 science, and men still fought about broad principles, intelli- 
 gible and interesting to most listeners. The inevitable days 
 of subdivision and detail had not yet come. "Why not 
 contrive to be here on Wednesday ? " writes the President 
 to one of his Council. "Dine with us 1 at the Crown 
 and Anchor, and attend our meeting, where we shall 
 have the rare union of old Adam of Cam, Buckland, 
 Conybeare, etc." Eare union indeed! The only paper 
 read at the meeting was by Sedgwick one of those lumin- 
 ous efforts which by a few broad lines served to convey, 
 even to non-scientific hearers, a vivid notion of the geology 
 of a wide region, or of a great geological formation. Em- 
 balmed in the Society's printed publications, the paper, as 
 we read it now, bears about as much resemblance to what 
 it must have been to those who heard it, as the dried leaves 
 in a herbarium do to the plant which tossed its blossoms in 
 
 1 i.e. The Geological Club, to be immediately referred to. 
 
196 SIR RODERICK MURCHISON. [mi. 
 
 the mountain wind. The words are there, but the fire and 
 humour with which they rang through that dingy room in 
 Somerset House have passed away. 
 
 In several of the learned Societies, and among them the 
 Geological, there had sprung up what were called " clubs ; " 
 these were gatherings of the more prominent members to 
 dine and talk, and thereafter to adjourn to the evening 
 meeting of the Society. Besides promoting good-fellowship 
 among the members, they gave opportunities for much 
 pleasant scientific gossip, and, what was one of their most 
 important functions, they kept up a strong nucleus for the 
 Society's ordinary meetings, to which, after a comfortable 
 dinner, the club adjourned in a body. Murchison, at this 
 time, and to the end of his life, took a leading share in the 
 business, gustatory and other, of the Geological Club, which 
 was founded in 1824. In one of his letters he urges a friend 
 to allow himself to be proposed for this club, " which we 
 endeavour to keep select, where you will always meet some 
 of the choicest spirits, and where you really always pick up 
 much geology in a quiet way." 
 
 To preside at such meetings must have been one of the 
 pleasantest duties a scientific man of that day could per- 
 form. But over and above his ordinary work for the Society, 
 the position of President brought with it an accession of 
 other multifarious duties and engagements. Professor 
 Phillips recalls how " men of science who visited London in 
 1831 were sure to be courteously met by the President of 
 the Geological Society, then residing in Bryanston Place, 
 profuse in hospitality and full of hearty zeal and kindly 
 sympathy for his brethren of the hammer, of whatever 
 country, which never left him." 
 
1803-31.] BATTLE IN THE ROYAL SOCIETY. 197 
 
 But besides these pleasant ways of using his influence, 
 there sometimes arose others where he was called on to 
 take part in less amicable intercourse. Thus, one of the 
 most notable incidents in the scientific doings in London in 
 this year was a keen battle over the Chair of the Eoyal 
 Society a battle into which Murchison seems to have 
 thrown himself with all the ardour of his military youth. 
 He gives the following account of it : " On the retirement 
 of Mr. Davies Gilbert from the chair, a certain clique in the 
 Society got up the notion that the Duke of Sussex would be 
 the best person we could fix upon. As soon as the plot got 
 wind, the indignation of all the real men of science knew no 
 bounds, and they resolved to start Herschel as an opponent 
 to the Eoyal Duke. We subscribed our names to a public 
 protest ; about eighty or ninety names were appended, in- 
 cluding those of nearly all the notable and working men in 
 science. It was resolved to beat us, and the greatest influ- 
 ence was used politically, royally, and socially to bring up 
 voters for the so-called royal cause. I became an active 
 canvasser for Herschel. 
 
 " At that time the Eoyal Society was very differently 
 composed from what it now is. Any wealthy or well-known 
 person, any M.P. or bank director, or East Indian nabob 
 who wished to have F.E.S. added to his name, was sure to 
 obtain admittance, by canvassing and by being elected at 
 any ordinary meeting. The consequence was that over all 
 that class of our body the Eoyal and Government influence 
 of the day was overpowering, and even Lord Holland, though 
 the gout was on him, was carried up into our meeting 
 room, where he had never been before, to vote for his royal 
 friend ! 
 
198 SIR RODERICK MURCHISON. [isso-si. 
 
 " I stood at the top of the stairs at Somerset House, 
 doing my best to catch a vote as any friend ascended. We 
 were beaten by 119 to 111. Many persons who had seen 
 our public declaration had felt so sure we should be victors 
 that they did not come up from the country. But so it 
 was. 
 
 " The election over, the good Duke found himself in a 
 dilemma. He wisely saw that he could not govern the 
 Society if he could not make up a better Council than he 
 came in with in 1830. He therefore resolved to choose his 
 advisers from among those who had most stoutly opposed 
 him, and who in fact mainly represented the science of the 
 body. Overtures were made to myself, and I deemed it to 
 be my duty to accept office under a Prince who could act 
 so liberally and kindly towards his opponents." 
 
 The ground on which this latter step was justified may 
 best be gathered from the following letter : 
 
 "November 14, 1831. 
 
 " MY DEAR WHEWELL, Oh for a quiet life ! I thought 
 like a simpleton that reform and cholera were enough to glut 
 one with horrors, and my poor and only consolation was 
 that I might absorb myself in science, and so fossilize my 
 mind and frame as to allow all those shafts to pass by 
 innocuous. Our campaign geological opened well with an 
 excellent memoir by Dr. Christie. . . . The point of irrita- 
 tion is nothing in our own good Society, but consists in the 
 formation of a new Council for the Eoyal, on which they 
 have placed my name as well as your own. I will begin 
 with the end, which is, that after much conflicting reasoning 
 with myself I have agreed to be on the Council, and I need 
 not add, that my determination was mainly influenced by 
 
1831.] EARLY DAYS OF ATHENAEUM CLUB. 199 
 
 finding we were to have a strong battery, in which I could 
 never disgrace myself in performing the part of a simple 
 bombardier. . . . You know as well as all my friends with 
 what zeal I opposed His Highness's election, but I am not 
 of that school who would cherish a rancorous and perpetual 
 hostility. ... I have got over all my other scruples, and 
 intend to go along with things as they are, and not to fight 
 against the stream and old time by joining B. and his cold 
 and comfortless crew. In taking this step I feel that I 
 shall be liable to the kind innuendos of some of my ultra 
 friends, but my most intimate friend Lyell, who is the only 
 man in my confidence on the point, completely approves of 
 my conduct." 
 
 " In this way," to return to the narrative, " the second 
 Council of the Duke of Sussex's administration was formed. 
 With his bonhomie, his ready access at all times when in 
 health, and his earnest desire to do what was best in the 
 interests of science, we who had been his opponents became 
 his best friends in the sequel. There was also this advantage 
 in having him for our chief, that all scientific rivalry was at 
 an end. 
 
 " As an active member of the Athenseum Club (of which 
 I was one of the original 300), I had a finger in most things 
 which were stirring among men of letters, art, and science. 
 It was for these men that the club was set up, Davy, Croker, 
 and Reginald Heber being its real founders and earliest 
 trustees. I must say that it was then a truly sociable and 
 agreeable society. Little home dinners of twelve or fourteen 
 were frequent, Heber or Davy often presiding, particularly 
 the former." 
 
 The Presidency of the Geological Society was employed 
 
200 SIR RODERICK MURCHISON. [1531-32. 
 
 by Murchison in a very characteristic way, wherein he con- 
 tinued to distinguish himself up to the end of his life. He 
 made it the ground for gathering at his house, in a more 
 public and official form than one could do in a private 
 capacity, assemblies in which scientific men mingled freely 
 with representatives from that non-scientific society of rank 
 and fashion to which he had always been so strongly 
 attached. To these gatherings Mrs. Murchison lent her 
 cordial help, giving them a charm which added much to 
 their popularity. We shall see in the records of later years 
 how marked this social habit became, and what an import- 
 ant bearing it had upon the position of science in the society 
 of his day. 
 
 One of the tasks of the President during his two years' 
 tenure of office, is to prepare an address for the Anniversary 
 of the Society in February. It had been customary to 
 devote that address to a general survey of the progress of 
 geology at home and abroad during the previous year a 
 labour which in the infancy of the science was not very 
 arduous, and had proved to be in the highest degree useful. 
 Murchison had now to undertake this task, perilous though 
 it might be for one who only eight short years before was 
 known merely for a keen sportsman, as ignorant of science 
 and as indifferent to its attractions as any other of the north- 
 country squires. Nevertheless he accepted the duty and 
 discharged it well. His address, indeed, lacks the vigour, 
 originality, and eloquence of his predecessor Sedgwick. 1 He 
 contents himself with a sober outline of the work which had 
 been done by the Society, and other labourers in this country 
 
 1 Yet it had the advantage of revision by Sedgwick, one or two 
 effective touches being due to his pen. 
 
1832.] LYELL AND MACCULLOCH. 201 
 
 and abroad. But he shows in every page the enthusiasm 
 with which he now pursued geology, and gives us pleasant 
 glimpses of the zeal and good-fellowship which marked the 
 first generation of the members of the Geological Society. 
 His concluding sentence runs thus : " Permit me to offer 
 you my heart-felt wishes for the continuance of your tri- 
 umphant career, and to assure you that I consider myself 
 truly ennobled in having been placed, for a time, at the head 
 of a brotherhood united for purposes so great, and knit 
 together by such lofty and enduring sympathies." 1 
 
 As illustrative of the progress of Geology in Britain at 
 the time, it may be mentioned that in this address the Pre- 
 sident had an opportunity of noticing Sedgwick's labours 
 (already referred to) among the rocks of Cumberland and 
 Westmoreland, Trimmer's discovery of marine shells on Moel 
 Tryfane in Wales, the appearance of Lindley and Button's 
 Fossil Flora, of the second volume of Lyell's Principles 
 of Geology, and of Macculloch's System of Geology, the 
 establishment of the British Association, and the great 
 increase in number and vigour of local scientific Societies. 
 To the thoughtful student of the history of science there is 
 something eminently suggestive in this conjunction of the 
 works of Lyell and Macculloch. The pages of the former 
 writer glowed with all the fervour of the newer school of 
 geology, which sprang out of the teachings of Hutton and 
 William Smith. The rocks were no longer treated as mere 
 mineral masses, but as documents from which the detailed 
 history of the earth and its inhabitants was to be compiled. 
 The remains of plants and animals now took the place of 
 importance which mineral species had formerly held, in so 
 
 1 Proc. Geol. Soc., vol. i. p. 386. 
 
202 SIR RODERICK MURCHISOX. [isa 
 
 much that they gradually monopolized to themselves the 
 term " fossil," which, in earlier days, had been given indiscri- 
 minately to every mineral substance taken out of the earth. 
 Appeals were made on every hand to living nature as a 
 guide to the changes of past time. Zoology and botany 
 became as essential to the geologists of this younger creed 
 as mineralogy and chemistry had been to their predecessors. 
 And thus in a few years, from being a mere subordinate 
 branch of rnineralogical inquiry, accused, and not altogether 
 unjustly, of indulging more in crude speculation than in 
 sober observation and induction, geology had sprung into a 
 foremost place among the great divisions of natural science. 
 This rapid change could receive no fitter acknowledgment 
 than in the words of Herschel, who said that in the mag- 
 nitude and sublimity of the objects of which it treats, 
 geology ranks next to astronomy, and that at length it was 
 brought effectually within the list of the inductive sciences. 
 In the midst of this glow of fresh thought and of vigorous 
 and ever broadening research, Macculloch's System made 
 its appearance like the sullen protest of the last high-priest 
 of a supplanted religion. Few had earned a better claim 
 than this author to the respect of English geologists for hard, 
 shrewd, original work, carried on among some of the least 
 accessible tracts of the British islands, and described at times 
 with a vigour of pen which not many of his brethren of the 
 hammer could equal. He might well have been content to 
 rest his reputation upon that early work. Owing perhaps 
 in large measure to bad health, acting upon a temperament 
 naturally sensitive, he seemed to regard Scotland and the 
 older rocks generally as a kind of geological preserve of his 
 own, over which, though he had for many years retired from 
 
Vol. I. 
 
 JOHN MA(.'(TIJ.<>('II, M.D. 
 
 tin Kiiiji'in-imj iijt/i' Fvrtmil '-;/ If. /.'. 
 
1832.] MACCULLOCH'S SYSTEM OF GEOLOGY. 203 
 
 field-work, he could not brook that any one should wield a 
 hammer without some licence from himself. Murchison and 
 Sedgwick had laid themselves open to his wrath by their 
 unauthorized raid into his territory. He made no sign at 
 the time; but a few years afterwards, viz., in 1831, he threw 
 this System at the heads of his rivals, and in the face of the 
 geological world. The book may be looked upon as almost 
 the last expiring effort of the old mineralogical school of 
 geology in Britain. In perusing it, the reader might suppose 
 himself to be in the midst of the literature of the end of the 
 previous century. Fossil remains are ignored, together with 
 all the new lines of inquiry which they had opened, and the 
 rocks are described according to their mineral characters, 
 precisely as if William Smith had never lived. And yet 
 the author assures the world that he had kept his manu- 
 script beside him for ten years, "in the hope that some 
 better man would stand forward to represent geological 
 science as it is : but he grieves to say that, during that long 
 period, geology has scarcely received a valuable addition, and 
 not a single fundamental one." As President of the Geo- 
 logical Society, it was Murchison's duty to repel this state- 
 ment, and to point with just pride to the Transactions of the 
 Society as a monument of what had been done during those 
 ten eventful years. 1 
 
 1 He does not specially refer to Macculloch's treatment of his own 
 work and that of Sedgwick. But no one can read the System without 
 encountering passages which evidently refer, in by no means a compli- 
 mentary tone, to the two fellow-labourers among the Scottish K,ed Sand- 
 stones. Macculloch's ill health and acrimony seemed to increase with his 
 years. In his last work, a pamphlet to accompany his Geological Map 
 of Scotland (1836), published unfortunately after his sad and sudden 
 death, his allusions became even more personal. (See, for example, the last 
 sentence on p. 94, where he refers to " the very ignorant and hypothetical 
 
204 SIR RODERICK MURCHISON. [ISB. 
 
 One of the time-honoured customs of the Geological 
 Society was then, and still is, to hold a dinner on the evening 
 of the anniversary ; so that, after the President has given an 
 exhaustive, and sometimes rather exhausting, address in the 
 afternoon, he takes the chair and makes after-dinner speeches 
 in the evening, surrounded with a goodly gathering of geolo- 
 gists and friends, who are of course all agreed as to the great 
 importance of the Society, and the unabating interest of the 
 science which it cultivates. In performing this function 
 Murchison seems to have been so well satisfied with the 
 success of his first public geological dinner that he took 
 some trouble to get it reported in the London papers, and 
 even wrote to a friend in Inverness to secure a notice of it 
 in one of the northern journals ! 
 
 " The summer of 1832," to quote from his journal, " was 
 begun with the Oxford meeting of the British Association, 
 and of this I need say nothing more than that, under the 
 presidency of Buckland, the body was then licked into 
 shape, and divided into six sections. As the mass of the 
 great guns of the metropolis had now joined us, and also 
 Sedgwick, Whewell, and the best men of Cambridge, our 
 success was assured. Altogether it was (thanks to its pro- 
 poser, Daubeny) a most auspicious meeting, the more so 
 as it terminated with an invitation, for the next year, from 
 Cambridge, with my dear colleague Adam Sedgwick as 
 presses. 
 
 persons. ") He speaks of his own labours as completing the geological in- 
 vestigation of Scotland, there being nothing further to be done save what 
 could, after a few weeks of experience, ' ' be effected by a surveyor's 
 drudge, or a Scottish quarryman " (p. 17). So far as Sedgwick and Mur- 
 chison were concerned, there was no cause for this hostility ; for, though 
 they had differed from him on some points, they had never ignored the 
 great services rendered to geology by Macculloch. 
 
im] BEGINS TO MAP THE WELSH ROCKS. 205 
 
 " The remainder of the summer was entirely devoted to 
 researches amidst my new loves, the ' Transition Eocks,' not 
 only by revisiting the old ground to complete my sections, 
 but by greatly extending my survey. I had now determined 
 to set to and map out the region. But, alas ! the Ordnance 
 maps of a large portion of the country I had determined to 
 examine were only in the course of construction, or not 
 begun. But I got hold of every scrap I could from the 
 Map Office, then directed by Colby, or from my friend 
 Major Robe at the Tower, and so I set to work in the terra 
 incognita to which I afterwards (1835) applied the name of 
 Siluria." 
 
 If it be true, as Bacon asserted, that " writing maketh an 
 exact man," it is no less true that mapping makes an exact 
 geologist. Without this kind of training, it is not easy to 
 grasp accurately the details of geological structure, and 
 hence the literature of the science is sadly overloaded with 
 papers and books which, had their authors enjoyed this pre- 
 liminary discipline, would either not have been written, or 
 would at least have been more worthy of perusal. Murchi- 
 son wisely resolved not to trust merely to eye and memory, 
 but to record what he saw as accurately as he could upon 
 maps. And there can be no doubt that by so doing he gave 
 his work a precision and harmony which it could never have 
 otherwise possessed, and that, even though still falling 
 into some errors, he was enabled to get a firmer hold 
 of the structure of the country which he had resolved to 
 master than he could have obtained in any other way. 
 For, to make his maps complete, he was driven to look 
 into all manner of out-of-the-way nooks and corners, with 
 which, but for that necessity, he might have been little 
 
206 SIR RODERICK MURCHISON. [iss. 
 
 likely to make acquaintance. It often happens that in such 
 half-hidden places the coiirse of a mountain torrent, the 
 bottom of a tree-shaded ravine, the gully cut by the frosts 
 and rains of centuries from the face of a lonely hillside 
 lies the key to the geological structure of the neighbourhood. 
 In pursuit of his quest, therefore, the geologist is driven to 
 double back to and fro over tracts never trodden perhaps by 
 the ordinary tourist, but is many a time amply recompensed 
 by the unexpected insight which this circuitous journeying 
 gives him into the less obtrusive beauties of the landscape. 
 
 Though Murchison had already learnt something of the 
 devious nature of a field-geologist's path through a country, 
 he had never before tried anything on so detailed and ex- 
 tensive a scale. At one time he might have been seen 
 measuring sections in Shropshire; soon thereafter, led on 
 by the rocks, he had got away west into Pembroke. 
 Thence, following up his game, he tracked it through the 
 wilds of Montgomery and Radnor, or south to the hills 
 overlooking the great Welsh coal-field, and back again into 
 the English borders. For weeks and months together this 
 work went on. Much of the ground proved difficult to 
 unravel, and cost its explorer many a restless night, for he 
 had now got his head so full of grauwacke, transition rocks, 
 and Old Red Sandstone, that he seems to have been able to 
 think or dream of nothing else. From his notes, however, 
 we may conjecture that though his days were given to hard 
 work out of doors, the evenings were often pleasantly spent 
 under the hospitable roof of the country gentlemen of the 
 region, some of them old friends, who still enjoyed a quiet 
 joke over the enthusiasm with which he now hunted " grau- 
 wacke " instead of foxes. 
 
1832.] JUBILANT OVER HIS EARLY SUCCESSES. 207 
 
 November, with the opening of the session of the Geolo- 
 gical Society, brought him back to London and the usual 
 routine of town life in winter. To Sir Philip Egerton he 
 writes immediately after his return, full of excitement over 
 the summer campaign : " I have done a fine stroke of 
 work. I have coloured up all the Ordnance Maps I could 
 procure, describing a zone of about twenty or thirty miles in 
 breadth, from the Wrekin and right bank of the Severn to 
 
 FOSSII-S FROM THE GRAUWACKE (CARADOC ROCKS). 
 
 1. Calymene Blumenbachii. 2. Homalonotus bisulcatus. 3. Phacops truncato-caudatus. 
 4. Tentaculites Anglicus. 5. Lingula crumena (Llandovery). 6. Orthis testudinaria, 7. O. 
 vespertilio. 8. Strophomena tenuistriata. 9. S. grandis. 10. Bellerophon bilobatus. 11. B. 
 nodosus. 12. Orthonota nasuta. 13. Nebulipora lens. 14. Diplograpsus pristis. 15. Grapto- 
 lithus priodon. 
 
 the mouth of the Towey, and I hope to show you four or 
 five distinct natural fossiliferous formations of great thick- 
 ness in our neglected ' grauwacke,' in which I have got 
 abundance of fossils many quite new ; indeed, I have 
 fished some out of the genuine Old Eed Sandstone which 
 overlies all my system. I had a most delightful tour, de- 
 spite certain premonitory choleritic attacks, which disabled 
 me occasionally. My wife met me in Somersetshire, 
 through which county and Wiltshire and Hants we re- 
 
208 SIR RODERICK MURCHISON. [isa. 
 
 turned, making visits to old friends till we reached our 
 county near Petersfield, where in the month of October I 
 laid low about sixty brace of cock-pheasants. We reached 
 town on the 6th of this month to open the geological 
 campaign. 
 
 " Mantell has discovered great part of a nov. spec, of large 
 Saurian in the Weald, which he supposes to be his dear 
 Iguanodon, of which you know he never as yet found more 
 than the head and teeth. His paper thereon is to be read 
 next meeting (December 5th), after which I am going down 
 to a battue at Up Park." 
 
 From the mass of letters which he allowed to accumulate 
 from month to month, some idea can be gathered of the 
 multifarious and distracting calls which were daily made 
 upon his time and attention during the years of his Pre- 
 sidency. The undisturbed early hours before breakfast are 
 given up to the elaboration of his notes. The morning post 
 brings perhaps, among other epistles, a wail from some 
 country geologist, because he has heard no tidings of an 
 elaborate memoir which he had sent up to the President, 
 in the confident belief that it would at once exercise the 
 collective wisdom of the Society. In the forenoon he 
 has to attend a meeting of committee for securing Abbots- 
 ford to Sir Walter's family ; or of another committee 
 which is busy organizing a subscription for a suitable 
 memorial to Cuvier. Then he goes by appointment to 
 meet Chantrey, who had made a design for the Wollaston 
 medal. In the afternoon he may have purposed to get 
 some of his Welsh notes into order ; but a foreign geologist, 
 with letters of introduction from some of his friendly Con- 
 tinental brethren of the hammer, appears at his door, whom, 
 
1833.] LONDON WORK AND COUNTRY PASTIME. 209 
 
 after giving up an hour or two to him, he finally takes to 
 Somerset House and consigns to the courtesy of the re- 
 spected Curator, Lonsdale. In the evening, unless, as often 
 happened, he had engaged himself to dine out, or to hold a 
 geological reception at home, he could attend to his corre- ' 
 spondence, or, if that had been already accomplished, he 
 might snatch a few hours to prepare an account of his 
 labours in the field for the Society, his wife at his side pre- 
 paring his drawings and otherwise aiding in the work. 
 
 And yet, despite these numerous avocations, time and 
 opportunity were both found for a flight now and then from 
 the bustle of London to the field- sports and friendly inter- 
 course of a country house. Witness the following account of 
 
 * 
 himself, written on 22d January 1833 : " I met my wife on 
 
 my return from Cheltenham, and we paid a visit of a week 
 to Lord Milton, in Northamptonshire, and I must say that I 
 never enjoyed a winter week more. He gave me a mount 
 on a capital thoroughbred, son of Cervantes, but the day was 
 unlucky. It was a woodland fox found in the Bedford pur- 
 lieus, which took us right into the heart of old 's preserves, 
 
 where the Earl and his Christmas friends were dropping the 
 long-tails. You must excuse me if I say that the ex-Minister 
 in his threadbare tartan, patch over his eyes, hat twisted up 
 behind, on a cock-tailed pony, with large gambadoes, dis- 
 tressed as he was by our irruption, looked a perfect pattern 
 for H. B. to realize the c ould constitution' of Dan O'Connell. 
 But the distress of the day was the death of a poor whipper- 
 in. I am now writing seven or eight hours per diem, nay, 
 even ten and twelve, to make up for lost time, and to enable 
 me to take the last week of the best shooting in England at 
 Up Park. So you see I am living a very sporting life for a 
 VOL. i. 
 
210 SIR RODERICK MURCHISON. [ISB. 
 
 P. G. S. I am delighted you are coming to the anniversary. 
 Greenough is to be my successor." 
 
 The continuous writing to which he refers was required 
 for the preparation of the presidential address at the forth- 
 coming anniversary in February. In looking back over the 
 pages of that forgotten document, we meet with notices of 
 several landmarks in geology, showing in what an eventful 
 period of the history of his favourite science the life of the 
 writer had been cast. Among the names of those whose 
 recent deaths he had to chronicle, and whose deeds it was 
 his duty to record, were Sir James Hall and Cuvier the 
 one standing at the head of physical geology, and linking 
 that generation with the early glories of the Huttonian 
 school ; the other acknowledged to be the great master of 
 that newer school of palaeontology which had so greatly 
 altered the aspect and the aims of geological inquiry. 4-roong 
 the topics of then recent discussion, he alludes to the erratic 
 boulders (" foundlings," as the Swiss have called them), 
 which, strewn over the plains of Europe, were beginning to 
 attract attention as evidence of some flood from the North 
 the first beginning of the deciphering of that wonderful 
 chronicle which has laid before us at last the story of the 
 Ice Age in Europe. Among the announcements of new 
 work he gives a sketch of his own labours among the old 
 rocks of the West, and alludes to those of Sedgwick. But 
 his most important item on this head was the reference to 
 the foundation of the Geological Survey, that great national 
 undertaking, over which, some two-and-twenty years later, 
 he was himself destined to preside, and in charge of which 
 he spent almost the last sixteen years of his life. Very 
 modest was its earliest equipment. Mr. Henry de la Beche 
 
1826-38.] LOCKHART AND BULWER. 211 
 
 had been appointed, in connexion with the Ordnance Survey, 
 " to affix geological colours to the maps of Devonshire, and 
 portions of Somerset, Dorset, and Cornwall." To the tact 
 of that sagacious man the Survey owed its existence, and to 
 his energy and skill it is indebted for its present importance, 
 and the great work which it has so far accomplished. 
 
 Writing late in life, and looking back upon this early 
 part of his scientific career in London, Murchison penned 
 the following reminiscences : " During all these years, viz., 
 1826-38, I inhabited No. 3 Bryanston Place, and, though I 
 had but a small establishment, I saw very agreeable society, 
 for, independent of my scientific friends, I was visited by 
 men in public life, as well as by the lovers of science, letters, 
 and the arts. With Hallam I was in constant intercourse, 
 and also with Lockhart, and with both of these very different 
 men I kept up an intimacy to their death. When Lockhart 
 came to London every one was afraid of the author of Peter's 
 Letters to his Kinsfolk, the more so as the Whigs were rabid 
 against him ; but with intimacy his reserve wore off, and I 
 declare that, amongst my friends, I never knew one who 
 was more lively, amusing, and confiding in dual converse, 
 nor one whose loss I more sincerely mourned. If he was a 
 good hater he was assuredly a warm friend. 
 
 " Shortly after Bulwer came to London I asked him to 
 dine, but did not tell him whom he was to meet. He had 
 just issued his Paul Clifford, and, meeting for the first time 
 at my table, Lockhart, who had cut it up unmercifully, the 
 young author took huff (for he was then a proud young 
 dandy), and thought I had done so to annoy him. It re- 
 quired all Chantrey's good-humour to keep the party to- 
 gether. 
 
212 SIR RODERICK MURCHISON. [MM-M. 
 
 " Sydney Smith, Lord Dudley, Conversation Sharp, Lord 
 Morpeth, the Parkes (now Wensleydales), Lord Lansdowne, 
 even the sensible and aged Duchess Countess of Suther- 
 land, did not disdain our small parties. Lady Davy rarely 
 came, for she was too exclusive. 
 
 " Among the foremost of our intimates was the all-accom- 
 plished, sensible, modest, and retiring Mrs. Somerville, who 
 with her jolly good husband the Doctor, then the Physician 
 of Chelsea Hospital, was constantly with us. We also often 
 visited them at Chelsea, and met there Mackintosh, and other 
 leading characters, Mackintosh in particular being a great 
 admirer of the lady philosopher. It was our pleasure to 
 bring this remarkable woman and Wollaston together, and 
 to gather from them crumbs of the profound knowledge 
 which they unostentatiously let fall 1 When we called on 
 Mrs. S. in the morning, and found her finishing off one of 
 her fine landscapes, or instructing her daughters in music, 
 we necessarily admired her feminine qualities, whilst we 
 knew she was up to every line of La Place's ' Me"canique 
 Celeste.' 
 
 "With these notables let me associate my geological 
 friends Charles Stokes and William Broderip. The former, 
 a stockbroker, was one of the most remarkable men I ever 
 knew, albeit he has left little behind him. Never out 
 of England, and constantly occupied in the city, he gave 
 up his evenings, nights, and mornings to other avocations, 
 was versed in all languages and a proficient in most branches 
 of Natural History. My little sketch of him in my anni- 
 versary address to the Geological Society gives but an im- 
 
 1 Mrs. Somerville, in her charming memoirs, gives some particulars of 
 her intercourse with Wollaston. See p. 128. 
 
1826-38.] REMINISCENCES OF LONDON LIFE. 213 
 
 perfect idea of his versatile powers. He was the bosom 
 friend of Chantrey, who also was his constant companion 
 with us or at the sculptor's own house. Then there was 
 dear old Major Clerke, the editor of the United Service 
 Journal, my old Marlow chum, and last, not least, Theodore 
 Hook, who first met Sydney Smith at my house, 1 and has 
 often, when very far gone, extemporized his songs to us over 
 the piano. But these things were my passing amusement, 
 and I was pondering all the time upon turning everything 
 into a geological use. 
 
 " Opposite men of all parties were intermingled with my 
 scientific cronies, Sedgwick, Buckland, Greenough, Fitton, and 
 others. These parties were really intellectual ; but now that 
 I live in a big house in Belgrave Square my grand dinners 
 are dull horrors and it is only when I can manage to have 
 a small one that I enjoy seeing company. 
 
 " I meddled little in public matters or politics, though 
 my feeling was Conservative, and I was one of those who 
 was, I confess, alarmed at the great sweep about to be 
 effected by the Eeform Bill. So I attended the debates 
 both in Lords and Commons, and was present at the whole 
 of the last day's debate in the latter, and which did not close 
 till five A.M. 
 
 " To resume my recollections of my earliest scientific 
 friends in London : I must specially dwell on the great 
 botanist Robert Brown, who was chiefly to be met with at the 
 Sunday breakfasts of Charles Stokes in Gray's Inn, and who 
 
 1 It is said (Timbs's Lives of the Humourists, vol. ii. p. 276) that Sydney 
 Smith and Theodore Hook met at table only twice : first at the house of 
 Lady Stepney, where " they were both delightful and mutually delighted;" 
 and secondly, soon after, on the occasion mentioned in the text, where they 
 met in a somewhat larger party, but where poor Hook's failing became 
 only too visible. 
 
214 . SIR RODERICK MURCHISON. [MSB-SB. 
 
 provoked my impatient temper because he never would 
 pronounce upon the genus scarcely even upon the class 
 of a fossil plant. Profound in his acquaintance with living 
 plants, he knew too well the fine limits and subtle distinc- 
 tions to be observed ; these being generally obliterated, and 
 the fructification being rarely visible, he paused and looked 
 again and again, and carne to no conclusion. Lindley, on 
 the other hand, being of a less cautious temperament, often 
 dashed off an opinion, and therefore gratified geologists. 
 Eobert Brown, though a quiet sedate man, was full of dry 
 humour, and told many a good story to his intimate friends, 
 among whom I was delighted to be reckoned till the day of 
 his death. I was one of the mourners at his burial at 
 Kensal Green, when this illustrious man had but a few old 
 friends to pay the last honours. How different was it but 
 the day before yesterday, when the popular novelist was 
 interred in the same place ! Doubtless, so good a master of 
 English, so smart a satirist, so warm-hearted a friend, and 
 so attractive a writer as Thackeray, merited all the eulogy 
 which has been poured out on "his character by all the press. 
 But if a man of science dies, however eminent he be, a 
 passing commendation is all he obtains, and it is doubtful 
 whether the compilers of such works as the Annual Register 
 will ever think it right to allude to the death of the first 
 botanist of our era. Nor can a different verdict be expected 
 from the masses or the fashionable world. Every one knows 
 Cornhill and Punch, Pendennis or Vanity Fair, or some one 
 of Thackeray's good novels, and so that author obtained a 
 good share of the public applause which the nation accorded 
 to Walter Scott, whilst the Princeps Botanicorum of Europe 
 dies unknown by English scribes. 
 
1826-38.] LOUIS PHILIPPE. 215 
 
 "Among my intimates and correspondents of the first 
 years of my geological career I must not omit to mention 
 George William Featherstonhaugh. He has played a bustling 
 and useful part through life, has published on a vast variety 
 of subjects, and was a most lively, agreeable companion. He 
 was the first to introduce our modern ideas of geology into 
 the United States, which he did with great energy in the 
 year 1831. Afterwards he induced General Jackson, then 
 the President, to appoint him ' State Geologist,' in which 
 capacity he made two extensive tours, illustrating them with 
 long sections. . . . In the French revolution of 1848, when 
 Louis Philippe fled from Paris and was hid in a cottage with 
 Queen Ame'lie on the south bank of the Seine opposite to 
 Havre, it was Featherstonhaiigh, then British consul at Havre, 
 who managed to get the family of ' Mr. Smith ' over by night, 
 and popped them into a British steam- packet. Even in this 
 act the consul was the geologist, for he passed off the ex-King 
 as his uncle William Smith, the father of English geology ! " 
 
CHAPTEE XII. 
 
 THE SILURIAN SYSTEM. 
 
 DURING the tenure of his Presidency of the Geological 
 Society Murchison had greatly raised his scientific position 
 in the country, both in regard to power of original geological 
 work, and to that practical turn of mind and suavity of 
 manner which fit a man to play a prominent and useful 
 part among his fellow-mea He hardly as yet realized the 
 real importance of the field-work which he had been carry- 
 ing on among the Transition rocks. Very slowly as the 
 years passed away did he come to see how full of signi- 
 ficance were the sections which he had brought to light 
 along the Welsh borders. 
 
 A few weeks after resigning the Chair of the Society he 
 gave the first detailed account of what he had been doing 
 during the two previous years among the " transition rocks " 
 and " grauwacke " on the border-land of England and Wales. 
 The brief abstract of the paper to the Geological Society in 
 which these details are communicated contains the first 
 
1833.] CLASSIFICATION OF TRANSITION ROCKS. 217 
 
 imperfect and partly erroneous sketch of a classification 
 which has since become so familiar to geologists. 1 
 
 Eeleased from work in town, Murchison sped back to his 
 rocks on the Welsh frontier, and passed the summer of 1833 
 in constant travel and work among them, " rummaging the 
 country," as he said, in search of fossils and evidences of the 
 order of sequence among the formations. Again his wife 
 became a partner in the tramp, and while he made more 
 distant forays, employed her pencil on some of the sketches 
 which afterwards appeared to such good purpose in the 
 " Silurian System." On one occasion the monotony of " the 
 perpetual cracking of stones " was pleasantly interrupted by 
 the appearance at the inn of that " famous talker, Eichard 
 Sharp," who, in taking leave of the enthusiastic geologist, 
 remarked to him, " Well, my good fellow, I feel assured that 
 you will end in becoming Lord Grauwacke." 
 
 While increasing his knowledge of the rocks, Murchison 
 managed also to augment his acquaintance with the in- 
 habitants of the country. Not always, however, to the 
 advantage of his scientific pursuits, for, as he used to say 
 later in life, "Good living in an aristocratical mansion is 
 hostile to geological research. I must honestly declare that 
 
 1 The subdivisions may be quoted here : 
 " I. Upper Ludlow Rock Equivalent, Grauwacke Sandstone of 
 
 Tortworth, etc. 
 
 II. Wenlock Limestone Equivalents, Dudley Limestone, Transition 
 Limestone, etc. 
 
 III. Lower Ludlow Bock Equivalent, ' Die earth.' 
 
 IV. Shelly Sandstones Equivalent, ? 
 
 V. Black Trilobite Flagstone, etc, Equivalent, ? 
 
 VI. Red Conglomerate, Sandstone, and Slaty Schist." 
 
 Proc. Geol. Soc., vol. i. p. 475. 
 
 In this table the Aymestry and "Wenlock Limestones are confounded, 
 and hence the Lower Ludlow Rock is placed under instead of above the 
 Wenlock Limestone. 
 
218 
 
 SIR RODERICK MURCHISON. 
 
 [1833. 
 
 in general I have done twice as much work when quartered 
 in an inn." It was in such a mansion, however, that a 
 project took its rise during this autumn, which came in the 
 end to make one of the landmarks of his life, and at the 
 same time an epoch in the literature of geology. His friend 
 Mr. Frankland Lewis had suggested that he should not 
 be content with the limited circle of readers which perused 
 
 View of the Breidden Hills noar Welsh Pool, from Powis Castle. 
 (Sketched by Mrs. Murchison.) 
 
 the ponderous Transactions of the Geological Society, but 
 should appeal to a wider public, and elaborate into a separate 
 volume his researches among the old rocks of the English 
 and Welsh border -land. This idea found a warm supporter 
 in Lord Olive, at Powis Castle, where Murchison agreed 
 to undertake the task. Before the middle of November 
 Lord Olive announced to him a list of eighty subscribers to 
 the proposed work. 
 
1833.] CUTTING UP OF ' OLD GRAUWACKE! 219 
 
 " I have truly done much work this summer," he writes 
 to Mr. Phillips, " having been seventeen weeks hammering, 
 with only one day of intermission. But you gallop when 
 you suppose I am ready for the press. Absorbed in your 
 own great undertaking, 1 you have not had time to think of 
 the magnitude of mine. Imprimis, My inquiries range over 
 seven counties, and they dive into the arcana of formations 
 of which no precursor has written one line ! Hence each 
 succeeding year in which I propagate the principles of our 
 craft, and enlist raw recruits in provinces where the sound 
 of the word geology was never heard before, I find on 
 revisiting my fields of battle that my aides-de-camp have 
 collected facts, and facts alter preconceived notions." 
 
 And so the work went on from the Vale of Severn to 
 St. David's. The proposed big book could not possibly make 
 its appearance until after far more complete and detailed 
 examination. Meanwhile each summer's labours were duly 
 communicated in abstract to the Geological Society. From 
 his friends there, such as Greenough, Lonsdale, and Phillips, 
 came letters of encouragement which brought the enthusi- 
 astic geologist back to London with renewed energy for 
 work. The campaign of the autumn of 1833 ended by 
 the despatch of five boxes full of specimens from the old 
 " grauwacke " of .the west to the apartments of the Geologi- 
 cal Society. Lonsdale, ever catering for the wants of the 
 Society, looked forward with his quiet glee to ever so many 
 evenings of amusement and instruction to be had out of these 
 boxes and the notes by which they were to be illustrated. 
 "We can picture him in his little den at Somerset House 
 surrounded with books, papers, and specimens, rubbing his 
 
 1 The Geology of Yorkshire, now a classic work in British geology. 
 
220 SIR RODERICK MURCHISON. [ISB. 
 
 hands as he wrote to Murchison " Poor old Grauwacke will 
 be cut up piecemeal." Poor old Grauwacke indeed ! With 
 the Woodwardian Professor hewing at him in Cumberland 
 and North Wales, and the President of the Geological 
 Society hacking at him all along the Welsh border, his 
 doom was evidently sealed. 
 
 "Perhaps no one better than Lonsdale comprehended 
 the true meaning of the work which Murchison undertook. 
 Certainly no one gave more effectual assistance in the often 
 delicate task of clearing up in the calmness of the closet the 
 difficulties which frequently misled the eager enthusiast in 
 the field. Murchison was never slow in acknowledging his 
 great obligation to his patient and right-judging friend." 1 
 
 Mr. Lonsdale's anticipations were fully realized during 
 that session of 1833-4. From the note-books of the previous 
 summer Murchison furnished four separate papers on differ- 
 ent parts of the geology of the districts among which he had 
 been at work. One of these contained the first published 
 table of the Transition rocks of England and Wales, in which 
 they were parcelled out into distinct formations, each char- 
 acterized by a peculiar assemblage of organic remains. The 
 arrangement showed a considerable elaboration and im- 
 provement upon that of the previous year. 2 
 
 1 From MS. reminiscences kindly contributed by Professor Phillips. 
 
 2 The subdivisions now adopted were as follows : 
 
 Old Red Sandstone. 
 
 ( Upper Ludlow rock. 
 
 < / I. Ludlow rocks, . . < Aymestry and Sedgeley limestone. 
 o I ( Lower Ludlow rock. 
 
 - -1 II WenlockandDudlevrocks J Wenlock and Dudley limestone. 
 
 C CO I -L-L* *V ClllUL-K. cllKL J_/UUltJ V l'-' ( -"-o. \ fir 11 l TV 11 11 
 
 S <S / ( Wenlock and Dudley shale. 
 
 O \ HI. Horderly and Mayhill ( Flags. 
 
 ^ J rocks, | Sandstone grits and limestones. 
 
 gj I IV. Builth and Llandeilo flags. 
 t> \ V. Longmynd andGwastaden 
 rocks. 
 
1834.] REPORTS TO GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 221 
 
 A characteristic account of those papers and their recep- 
 tion was given by their author in a letter to Sir Philip 
 Egerton (3d February 1834) : "Though I say it who should 
 not, I must fairly tell you that the season [at the Geological 
 Society] has not yet produced much, except the communica- 
 tions I have made. I judge as much from our friend Lons- 
 dale's estimate as from my own, perhaps perverted, vision. 
 ... By accident I had a very good dress circle on my second 
 night, for besides Buckland, Warburton, Lyell, De la Beche, 
 
 The Caradoc Range. (Sketched by Mrs. Stackhouse Acton. 
 
 and performers who could understand it, the President of 
 H.M. Council, the M. of Lansdowne, dined with me at the 
 club, having quitted a Colonial Council to do so, and he sat 
 it all through the evening." 
 
 Important as were these communications to the Society, 
 they could only be abstracts of the work of the long summer 
 campaigns. The full details were now to be elaborated for 
 the opus magnum on which the energies of the next four years 
 were to be concentrated. By the month of August all the 
 preliminaries as to publication had been arranged with Mr. 
 
222 SIR RODERICK MURCHISON. [ISM. 
 
 Murray, and the forthcoming work was advertised as in 
 preparation. But much still required to be done in the field 
 in tracing out the geological changes in the long strip of 
 country through which the Transition rocks extended. Hence 
 as soon as he could get away from town Murchison buckled 
 on his hammer again, and betook himself to a re-examina- 
 tion of his old .ground in Shropshire and adjoining counties. 
 Up till this time Sedgwick and he had been labouring 
 independently among the old grauwacke rocks, as if each 
 had got hold of a very distinct problem which could be, and 
 indeed needed to be, separately solved. The domains which 
 they had seized were conterminous, and tacitly a sort of 
 'bateable land had been allowed to stretch between them. 
 It was in the summer of this year (1834) that they met to 
 arrange, if possible, an amicable adjustment of boundaries. 
 Sedgwick crossed over into his friend's territories to make 
 with him a conjoint tour, which was thus described at the 
 time in two letters from Murchison to Dr. Whewell, dated 
 18th July: 
 
 " ' The first of men ' took leave of me and my little car- 
 riage at Ludlow, on the 10th July, bending his steps (nearly 
 as firm as I ever knew them) toward Denbighshire. We 
 not only put up our horses together, but have actually made 
 our formations embrace each other in a manner so true, and 
 therefore so affectionate, that the evidence thereof would 
 even melt the heart, if it did not convince the severe judg- 
 ment, of some Cantab, mathematicos of my acquaintance." 
 
 "Having dovetailed our respective upper and lower 
 rocks in a manner most satisfactory to both of us, I hastened 
 back to join my wife. ... I shall run down to Edinburgh 
 just in time for the meeting, and the feast being over, the 
 
1834.] SEDGWICK AND MURCHISON IN WALES. 223 
 
 Professor and self intend to look at some other border cases 
 of transition, the whole to conclude with a lecture from 
 him to myself on his strong ground of Cumberland. I was 
 not a little proud of having such a pupil ; and although I 
 think and hope he endeavoured to pick every hole he could 
 in my arrangement, he has confirmed all my views, some of 
 which, from the difficulties which environed me, I was veiy 
 nervous about until I had such a lacker. But I will say no 
 more of Number One than to assure you that we had a most 
 delightful and profitable tour in every way, and that our 
 section across the Berwyns, in which the Professor became 
 my instructor, was of infinite use to me. Such are the fold- 
 ings and repetitions that my ' black flags ' of Llandeilo are 
 reproduced even on the eastern side of these mountains, and 
 it is only as you get into them that you take final leave of 
 my upper groups, and get fairly sunk in the old slaty systems 
 of the Professor. 
 
 " I will leave him to tell you of all our marches and 
 countermarches in Hereford, Brecon, Caermarthen, Mont- 
 gomery, and Salop. . . . Whether he fell in love with some 
 of the Salopian lasses or not is in his own breast ; but I can 
 assure you that a whole houseful of them are deeply smitten 
 with him. When we parted at Ludlow it was found that he 
 had left that beautiful brown coat of his in the very house 
 where all these sirens were, so I left him posting back to 
 recover the old garment, and perhaps to leave his heart." 1 - 
 
 1 From this letter it will be seen that Murchison at least was fully con- 
 vinced of the dovetailing of his groups of rock with the older slaty masses 
 on which Sedgwick had been at work more to the north and west. As 
 we shall find, he published this conviction without note or protest from 
 his friend, who indeed publicly accepted and declared the same belief (see 
 postea, p. 230). Many years afterwards, however, when bitterness had 
 arisen between these two comrades, and when perhaps the recollection of 
 
224 SIR RODERICK MURCHISON. [ISM. 
 
 The British Association held its meeting this year in 
 Edinburgh. Thither the two fellow-labourers made their 
 way, the one to resign the Presidency which he had held so 
 successfully at Cambridge, the other to show his Grauwacke 
 and Old Eed Sandstone maps, and to take a share in the 
 task of still further consolidating and strengthening the 
 infant Association. 
 
 In a letter written to Sir Philip Egerton on his way south 
 again to the Welsh and Shropshire rocks, Murchison thus 
 refers to the doings at Edinburgh, and afterwards : " The 
 meeting was most successful in every way. ... I may say, 
 
 what actually took place at the time with which we are dealing had be- 
 come in some measure indistinct, Sedgwick penned and published an 
 account of this first conjoint tour in Wales, differing considerably from 
 that given in the letter quoted in the text. He says, " There were early 
 difficulties, both physical and palseontological, in distinguishing the Lower 
 Silurian from the Upper Cambrian groups, and in fixing their true geo- 
 graphical limits, and it was partly in the hopes of settling such points of 
 doubt that in 1834 I went, during six weeks, under my friend's personal 
 guidance, to examine the order of succession as established by himself in 
 the typical Silurian country. Beginning therefore at Llandeilo, and end- 
 ing the first part of our joint work at Welsh Pool, we examined many of 
 his best sections. Occasionally, while he was working out minute details, 
 1 spent some days in collecting fossils. ... I believed his sections, so far 
 as I saw them, to be true to nature ; and I never suspected (nor had he 
 then suspected) any discordancy or break of continuity amongst his typical 
 rocks from the Upper Ludlow down to the Llandeilo groups. I adopted 
 all his groups, I may say, with implicit faith, never dreaming of a chance 
 (during a rapid visit) of correcting those elaborate sections on which he had 
 bestowed so much successful labour. . . . We never examined or discussed 
 together the Silurian base-line in the country south of Welsh Pool ; and what- 
 ever be the merit or demerit of the base-line afterwards published in the map 
 of the ' Silurian system,' belongs exclusively to my friend. [See posted, p. 307.] 
 As to this base-line, I neither gave nor had I an opportunity of giving any 
 opinion, either good or bad. . . . North of Welsh Pool we reached a country 
 (east of the Berwyns) with which I was previously acquainted. . . . My 
 friend now made use of and interpreted some of my field sections of 1832. 
 ... I guided my friend (as he in his Silurian country had guided me) over 
 the Bervvyn chain to the Bala limestone, along the high road from Rhaiadr 
 to Bala. We made no mistake in the section. . . . My friend then de- 
 
VOL. I 
 
 FROFKSSOK .IOI1N I'l.AVKAll,. 
 
 I-', '"in n I'liin/infi iri/ Sif IIi'inii Raeourn. 
 
1834.] WITH SEDGWICK AT SICCAR POINT. 225 
 
 without vanity, that we geologicals were all the fashion, and 
 engrossed by far the greater share of attention. Agassiz has 
 pronounced that not one of the fossils of the Burdiehouse 
 limestone are reptiles, but all belong to fishes. You will be 
 amused to read old Buckie's lecture, given two nights before 
 Agassiz made his decision against the reptiles, for in it the 
 reptiles made a grand figure. My fishes in the Old Eed are 
 baptized Cephalaspis, from their horse-shoe heads. ... I 
 was a day at Lord Melville's, after which Sedgwick and self 
 moved on together to Sir John Hall's at Dunglass to look 
 at St. Abb's Head and the Siccar Point, both famous by the 
 writings of Hutton, Playfair, and Hall. Whilst at Dunglass 
 
 clared that the Bala limestone was no part of his Silurian system." The 
 Professor points out the error in classifying the Bala rocks as underlying 
 all the Silurian groups, their true place being the equivalent of that of the 
 Caradoc rocks in the lower Silurian series. He asserts that for this error, 
 hardly avoidable at the time it was made, Murchison was alone responsible. 
 It is difficult to see on what evidence this charge rests. One fact at least 
 is certain, that if Murchison started the error, Sedgwick adopted it and 
 believed it for years, although, according to his own showing, the means 
 existed in his own territory of putting the matter to rights at once. " A 
 single traverse from Glyn Ceiriog to the northern end of the Berwyn 
 chain would have settled this question on evidence not short of a physical 
 demonstration. But we did not make this traverse." British Palaeozoic 
 Fossils, Introduction, pp. xliii-xlv (1855). But evidence may be found 
 in Sedgwick's own letters to show that he thought and wrote under 
 at least the impression that his own Welsh rocks were older than those of 
 Murchison. Thus even so far back as February 1833 he wrote to his 
 friend in reference to a proposed dovetailing of their work : " The upper 
 system of deposits, with its subdivisions, is as plain . as daylight, and 
 entirely under your set." It would be easy to multiply quotations from 
 contemporary geological literature to show that this was the general im- 
 pression among geologists as to the views of the two pioneers in Wales. 
 As an illustrative example, reference may be made to the first edition of 
 Lyell's Elements of Geology, published in 1838, before the appearance of 
 Murchison's Silurian System. See p. 464, where Sedgwick is given as 
 the authority for calling Cambrian a vast thickness of stratified rocks, 
 "below the Silurian strata in the region of the Cumberland lakes, in N". 
 Wales, Cornwall, and other parts of Britain." This subject will come up 
 again in later chapters of this biography. 
 
 VOL. I. P 
 
226 
 
 SIR RODERICK MURCHISON. 
 
 [18S4. 
 
 I fell in with my old friend Lord Elcho. who has set up a 
 very crack pack of fox-hounds, and he so tempted me with 
 the offer of a mount on his best nag, that I could not refuse ; 
 and I am still suffering from the stiffness incident to this 
 frolic, not having been accustomed to screw to my seat for 
 the last ten years. Sedgwick and myself explored the head- 
 land together, and in the boat we had with us our host, Sir 
 John Hall, and Archibald Alison, a clever young Scotch 
 
 View of the Cliffs near St. Abb's Head. (Sketched by Sir A. Alison.) 
 
 advocate, who made sketches of the rocks in my note- 
 book." 1 
 
 Murchison's journals of this period of his life read very 
 much like the field notes of an active geologist. Personal 
 detail is wholly wanting, and the gist of the scientific work 
 has long been given to the world. From the letters which 
 he has preserved, we can see what a voluminous correspon- 
 
 1 One of these sketches by the future historian and baronet was after- 
 wards introduced into Siluria (4th edit., p. 149), and is reproduced here. 
 
1834.] PROPOSES THE TERM ' SILURIAN: 227 
 
 dence he must have kept up with friends who lived among 
 his grauwacke rocks, and from whom he derived continual 
 assistance in the shape of notes on the geology, and of fossils. 
 He acknowledged, in his published writings, the value of this 
 co-operation, and gave the names of his principal coadjutors. 
 Even the very children of some of his friends were enlisted 
 in his service, and delighted to get away into the quarries to 
 hunt for fossils for him ; and at a time when these fossils 
 had never been systematically collected and described, it 
 may easily be imagined that this juvenile help proved in 
 many cases eminently serviceable. 
 
 It was now plain, after all these campaigns, that though 
 many details might be added afterwards, the grand order of 
 succession of the grauwacke had only been made more clear 
 by every new examination. It had been subdivided into 
 four well-marked formations, each as defined by mineral 
 characters and fossils as any members of the secondary 
 series. To continue to apply the terms " grauwacke" or 
 " transition" to these distinct fossiliferous formations, as 
 well as to all the old crumpled unfossiliferous rocks, would 
 evidently lead to endless confusion. They required a special 
 name. The story of their nomenclature is thus told by 
 Murchison himself : " At this time I proposed the term 
 ' Silurian,' and it came about in this way. My friend, the 
 eminent French geologist, filie de Beaumont, seeing what a 
 clear classification I had made out by order of superposi- 
 tion and characteristic fossils in each descending formation, 
 earnestly urged me to adopt a name for the whole of the 
 natural groups. Seeing that the region in which the best 
 types of it occurred was really the country of the Silures 
 of the old British King Caractacus, I adopted that name 
 
228 SIR RODERICK MURCHISON. [isss. 
 
 [Silurian]. I had seen that all geological names founded on 
 mineral or fossiliferous characters had failed to satisfy, and 
 that fanciful Greek names were still worse. Hence it seemed 
 to me that a well- sounding geographical term, taken from 
 the very region wherein the classification had been elabo- 
 rated, and where every one might go and see the truthfulness 
 of it, was the best." 1 
 
 The first publication of this new name took place in 
 July 1835 in the pages of the London and Edinburgh Philo- 
 sophical Magazine. In a brief article the author gives his 
 reasons for the proposed term, with some improvements of 
 his previous tabular statement, and a woodcut section to 
 show the way in which the rocks are related to each other 
 in their several subdivisions. As the parent of all subse- 
 quent Silurian sections, the diagram possesses a peculiar in- 
 terest : a facsimile of it is inserted on the opposite page. 2 
 
 Before leaving town for the usual summer work in 
 Siluria he headed a deputation to Government to represent 
 the urgent need of a good map of the northern half of the 
 island a subject which had occupied the attention of the 
 'British Association at Edinburgh. Writing in later years 
 of this incident, he remarks, " Spring Eice, the Chancellor 
 
 1 Murchison's extreme anxiety regarding the names to be chosen for 
 his formations, is well shown in a letter of ten large pages which he 
 addressed to Dr. Whewell on 20th November 1834, " as the great Geolo- 
 gical Nomenclator," entreating his assistance in improving his tabular list 
 of the grauwacke rocks. 
 
 This section shows in a kind of rough general way the order in which 
 the successive divisions follow each other. It is inaccurate, however, 
 inasmuch as it represents a continuously conformable series from the coal- 
 measures down to the base of the Llandeilo rocks, and places the latter 
 rocks in a violent unconform ability upon those of older date. It was the 
 general belief, as already remarked, that the " Silurian" formations 
 described by Murchison belonged to a younger series of deposits than 
 the rocks of North Wales investigated by Sedgwick. 
 
1835.] 
 
 229 
 
 ^g 
 
 
 i 
 
 
 i-5 
 
 d 
 
 
 .5 
 
 
 S oo 
 
 
 
 PH 
 
 <N 'q 
 
 8 
 
 P" 
 
 1* 
 
 
 -I 
 
 
 
 
 
 | 
 
 c 
 
 
 
 3 00 
 
 O 
 
 3s 
 
 ^o 
 
 1 
 
 o 
 
 
 
 <* 'fl 
 
 HJ 
 
 c8 
 
 
 3 ' 
 
230 SIR RODERICK MURCHISON. [isss. 
 
 of the Exchequer, received us blandly, and with his Irish 
 blarney joked me off by saying that I had hunted very well 
 in Leicestershire with the Melton map, and made several 
 good shifts. He avowed, however, that until Ireland got 
 her map we should or could not get ours. And so it has 
 proved." 
 
 In its cycle of changes the British Association held its 
 meeting this year (1835) in Dublin. We have here no fur- 
 ther concern with this assembly than that it was attended 
 by Murchison and Sedgwick, and that they conjointly gave 
 there an account of what they had each been doing to 
 "poor old Grauwacke." The chief feature of interest about 
 this communication is the light it casts upon the views 
 which the two friends entertained of the connexion of their 
 respective areas of work. And this becomes a matter of 
 some importance in relation to the subsequent unhappy 
 estrangement. Sedgwick now gave the name of Cambrian 
 to the rocks among which he had hammered so much in 
 Cumberland and Wales. There cannot be the slightest 
 doubt that at this time, together with Murchison and geolo- 
 gists generally, he regarded his Cambrian masses as older 
 than the Silurian rocks. His colleague stated that in 
 South Wales he had traced many passages from the bottom 
 of the Silurian system down into the slaty rocks now called 
 Upper Cambrian. He himself made no opposition to this 
 view ; on the contrary, after showing that the lowest Silurian 
 group was connected with his highest series in the chain of 
 the Berwyns, he proceeded " to explain the mode of con- 
 necting Mr. Murchison's researches with his own." It 
 turned out in the end that this notion was erroneous, and 
 that the upper half of Sedgwick's Cambrian rocks was simply 
 
1835.] AT THE GIANT'S CAUSEWAY. 231 
 
 a prolongation of the lower half of Murchison's Silurian. 
 But it was an error in which at this time both of the geo- 
 logists must be regarded as participating. 
 
 The following memoranda from journal and letters give 
 us some notion of the doings of the autumn of this year : 
 
 " A frolic in the north of Ireland with Sir P. Egerton, 
 
 Lord Cole, Sedgwick, my wife, and others, when I made 
 some good geological notes. In clambering along the steep 
 slope [near Giant's Causeway], Sedgwick lost his head, and we 
 much feared that he would fall into the sea. Griffith alone 
 crossed the Devil's Bridge, Sedgwick, Cole, Colonel Mont- 
 gomery, and self, having turned back and gone up the hill 
 and round. My wife boated all the way and made sketches, 
 and joined us at the comfortable inn of Bush Mills, where 
 we had a very jolly party." Thereafter " I returned to my 
 old hunting grounds of the Silurian region." 
 
 " A pleasant visit at Hagly, but I took care to stick to 
 the tail of the Dudley field, which I finished off (ordering a 
 new gun of Westly Eichards in a parenthesis). In Tort- 
 worth I laboured hard for four or five days, and having com- 
 pleted my map, I then took my departure for Pembrokeshire, 
 sending Madam on to the neighbourhood of Bath to visit 
 some old friends till I became a free man. I spent a day 
 with Conybeare on my road. I then set to work in Pem- 
 broke most vigorously, and after three weeks of incessant 
 labour, every day's work proving to me how much I had to 
 do, I left off, perfectly satisfied with having completed a 
 very handsome tail- piece for my Silurians, who are now 
 regularly launched in three bays in Pembrokeshire. What 
 an absurd name does this Grauwacke now appear to be ! 
 I joined my wife two days ago, and shall be in my den to- 
 
232 SIR RODERICK MURCHISON. [isse. 
 
 morrow, there to shut myself up till the big book is ready 
 an awful thought ! " 
 
 This self-imposed seclusion would have been serious had 
 it been carried out, for the big book did not make its ap- - 
 pearance for three years afterwards. The volume grew far 
 beyond the dimensions originally proposed. In its prepara- 
 tion, too, questions were continually occurring which made 
 a re-examination of the ground either desirable or necessary. 
 Hence, although the winters were spent in tolerably close 
 application to the desk, the summer months commonly saw 
 the pen willingly exchanged for the hammer. 
 
 As season after season stole past without bringing his 
 work to light, some even of his geological friends began to 
 get impatient. His excuse was thus given to his friend 
 Phillips in the spring of 1836 : 
 
 "There are at least three reasons why I cannot bring 
 out the ' Silurian System' with that promptitude with which 
 you have issued your monograph of the ' Carboniferous 
 Limestone/ 1st, I have not the same facility of composi- 
 tion. 2dly, I depend on others, and not as you do on your- 
 self, for the description and figuring of the organisms. 3dly, 
 The work is so multifarious, being, besides the history of the 
 rocks beneath the Carboniferous system, an attempt to work 
 out all the general relations of the Lias, New Eed Sand- 
 stone, and Coal-measures of those central counties. . . . 
 The work is entirely written save the descriptions of the 
 organisms a very large salvo this ! I cannot shove 
 Sowerby on, and when he is shoved on I am not so sure of 
 him as I could wish. My corals I have no doubt will be 
 beautifully distinguished by Lonsdale ; my fishes by Agassiz ; 
 plants I have none ; my graptolites by Dr. Beck of Copen- 
 
1836.] VISITS DEVONSHIRE. x 233 
 
 hagen. What would I not give, my dear friend, for your 
 powers in the description of the mollusca !" 
 
 "The correspondence [with the Council of the British 
 Association on the subject of the delay in completing the 
 Ordnance survey] is ordered to be printed for the use of the 
 House of Commons, who now begin to feel (railroads cutting 
 into their senses) that physical geography is of some im- 
 portance even to senators." 
 
 In such busy but uneventful routine the three years 
 1836-1839 passed away, the chief feature in each of them 
 being the autumn meeting of the British Association, at 
 which, whether called from the desk or the hill- side, Mur- 
 chison did not fail to make his appearance. 
 
 "In the year 1836," he writes, "I had a good deal of 
 anxiety on account of my dear mother, whose health had 
 been failing, and to whom I had gone at Cheltenham in the 
 spring. This was a cholera year, and my wife having gone 
 down to see her mother at Nursted House, I went in June 
 into Devonshire with Sedgwick to try to understand the 
 complicated geology of that county." 
 
 This tour in the south-west of England proved to be 
 the beginning of a series of explorations carried on for 
 three years conjointly by the two geologists, which re- 
 sulted in the establishment of the Devonian system in geo- 
 logy. For the sake of clearness it will be best to trace 
 out that story by itself in the next chapter. In the mean- 
 time we may merely note in passing when and where the 
 explorations were carried on, until we reach the culmination 
 of the Silurian work in the publication of " the big book." 
 It will then be easy and may be useful to turn back 
 for details, and follow out the history of the Devonian 
 
234 SIR RODERICK MURCHISON. [me. 
 
 question, which thus to some extent overlapped the 
 Silurian. 
 
 An excellent start was made during this first excursion 
 into Devonshire, and, as we shall afterwards find, materials 
 were gathered for a bold announcement to the meeting of 
 the Association at Bristol " At that meeting," to resume 
 our quotations, " the fun of one of the evenings was a lecture 
 of Buckland's. In that part of his discourse which treated of 
 Ichnolites, or fossil foot-prints, the Doctor exhibited himself 
 as a cock or a hen on the edge of a muddy pond, making 
 impressions by lifting one leg after the other. Many of the 
 grave people thought our science was altered to buffoonery 
 by an Oxford Don. 
 
 " After the meeting my mother became rapidly worse, 
 and died at the age of sixty- five, my sister Jeanette and 
 myself being present in her last sufferings. I buried her in 
 the same grave with my father, at the little church of Bath- 
 hampton, near Bath. In the same churchyard my mother's 
 brother, my old general, Sir Alexander Mackenzie, has smce 
 been interred. No man ever had a more affectionate mother 
 than myself, her only defect being over-indulgence of her 
 children." 
 
 At the end of the Bristol meeting the Woodwardian 
 Professor went down into Devon and Cornwall to do some 
 further hard work among the rocks there. He was at that 
 time intent on getting a clue to the history of the joints by 
 which rocks are so abundantly traversed. But Murchison, 
 having manuscripts and proof-sheets on hand, did not 
 accompany him, though once again the unwearying explorer 
 of Siluria found cause to go over part of his old sections to 
 verify them, driving from town to town in a butcher'= "-- f 
 
183&] WITH PHILLIPS IN SILURIA. 235 
 
 which he had hired for the purpose. His friend Phillips met 
 him by appointment at Brecon, to examine with him the 
 curious little tract of Corn y Vaen, and the Professor has 
 made the following memoranda of the journey : " Welsh 
 ponies were in requisition, and we reached the hill, hoping 
 to escape the jealous company of the Welsh farmer, who 
 looked upon the men of the hammer as some kind of miners 
 secretly prowling for gold or coal. Murchison had paid 
 many visits, and had tried to explain to the inquisitive 
 agriculturist why the barren grey rocks prominent above 
 the ' Old Eed Sea ' had so much interest in his eyes. On 
 this occasion I also had to encounter ' the old man of the 
 mountain,' because my clinometer was in great use in 
 respect of dip, cleavage and joints. ' Axes of elevation,' 
 ' direction of fault,' ' extent of throw,' ' envelope of old red/ 
 and other strange phrases, made our friend very angry, so 
 that, unlike Welshmen in general, he offered us no kind of 
 welcome or refreshment, but appeared to rejoice in our going 
 away as a relief from some positive evil." 
 
 Back in London again among his books and papers, Mur- 
 chison writes on November 21st to Sir Philip Egerton : 
 
 " I am going through my heavy work, and am just send- 
 ing to press all that I mean to say of the 'New Eed 
 System.' . . . 
 
 " My bone-bed in the Ludlow rocks is turning up 
 trumps jaws with teeth complete, carnivorous shark-like 
 little fellows, with loads of coprolites, indicating that my 
 Silurians digested even harder stuff than your Liassic 
 friends, viz., Pentacrinites, etc. ! This is beautiful, at 
 some 8000 or 10,000 feet below the fish beds at which 
 Buckland begins his transition stories about the oldest 
 
236 
 
 SIR RODERICK MURCHISON. 
 
 [1836. 
 
 fishes. But it will do for his third or fourth edition. 1 He 
 has been in town last week, and was one day closeted with 
 Babbage eight or nine hours, to get his siphuncle into order. 
 It appears that Sedgwick and others, on reading the Nau- 
 tilus Theory, at once saw there was a screw loose in the 
 mechanics, and that if the animal got down to depths un- 
 known he never could get up again. I know not how it is 
 
 FOSSILS FROM THE GBAUWACKE OR TRANSITION ROCKS (UPPER LiLANDOVERY). 
 
 1. Pentamerus lens. 2. P. oblongus. 3. P. liratus. 4. Atrypa hemispherica. 5. A. 
 reticularis. 6. Pentamerus undatus. 7. Strophomena compressa. 8. Holopella cancellata. 
 9. Bellerophon trilobatus. 10. Encrinurus punctatus. 11. Petraia subduplicata. 
 
 to end, but I hope our friend will be able to sing Eesurgam. 
 On the whole the book pleases most people. 
 
 " We are going on swimmingly, with bumper meetings. 
 I am working from six A.M. till dark." 
 
 Sedgwick had promised to share in the preparation of a 
 memoir on the Devonshire geology, but postponed from week 
 to week the completion of his task. Chafing at this delay 
 Murchison employed a part of the winter in putting together 
 in conjunction with Hugh E. Strickland then just beginning 
 a career cut short sadly and too soon a memoir on the New 
 Red Sandstone, in which the English deposits of that age 
 
 1 Reference is here made to Bucklancl'a well-known Bridgewater 
 Treatise. 
 
1887.] SEDGWICK'S CRITICISM. 237 
 
 were correlated with the Keuper and Bunter formations of 
 Germany. The paper was referred by the Council of the 
 Society to Sedgwick, and here is his opinion of it as given 
 to Murchison himself : 
 
 "I have reported favourably on your paper on the 
 Keuper, and said that it ought to be printed. But was ever 
 such a blotched, patched, botched, scratched, blurred, bothered 
 thing sent to an arbitrator ! with a prospectus, too, of certain 
 plates affixed like a tin case to its tail, I suppose to make it 
 go. It made me mutter bad words through my teeth many 
 times over before I got to the end of it. Perhaps I did not 
 swear outright ; but you have no right to tempt me." 
 
 This description of the author's style of caligraphy is not 
 more graphic than true. His manuscript as it went to the 
 printers was usually so scored, and crossed, and rewritten, as 
 to be sometimes with difficulty legible even by himself. 
 When the proof came back it soon grew under his pen 
 nearly as bad as the original manuscript, and many a time 
 had to be set up afresh. His publisher said of him that he 
 " wrote in type." 
 
 It was in the elaboration of chapter after chapter of 
 such exasperating manuscript that a good part of the summer 
 of 1837 passed away. The affairs of the British Association 
 entailed indeed a large amount of correspondence and other 
 duties upon a General Secretary. The meeting this year 
 at Liverpool drew Murchison as usual out of his den at 
 Bryanstone Place, and gave him a week of hard work and 
 incessant festivity. For by degrees the rigidly scientific 
 aspect of the Association had come to be more veiled by 
 the abundant hospitality and good cheer with which the 
 members were welcomed. Each town to which they came 
 
238 SIR RODERICK MURCHISON. [is*. 
 
 strove to vie with the previously visited places in this non- 
 scientific part of the proceedings. Philosophers, it was found, 
 did not despise a good dinner, and were quite ready to 
 take part in an evening party, or a more formal and crowded 
 soiree. 
 
 Liverpool received them on this occasion with the most 
 lavish expenditure. As General Secretary, Murchison had 
 more than enough to do, but he found time to send the 
 following notes to his wife : 
 
 " The preparations here are excellent. Turtle daily at 
 the ordinary, so what is to become of the poor savans when 
 they go back to country quarters ? We dine with the 
 Mayor to-morrow, whose lady has a grand soiree in the 
 evening, and thus begin our frolics." 
 
 "You are a reasonable woman, and know what a week 
 I have had ! nothing have I done but dream, work, and 
 think for the Association. All has gone off admirably, in 
 spite of wind and weather. The conversazione and lighter 
 parties for the evening have been much preferred to the 
 dull affairs of former meetings, and the splendid fete given 
 in the Botanical Gardens to 2600 persons, all of whom were 
 fed, and for which fortunately the day of Friday was line, 
 contributed no little to the complete success of the thing. 
 Last night we had our finale, and all our thanks." 
 
 The rest of 1837, and nearly the whole of the next year 
 were given up to the completion of the " Magnum Opus" 
 and the seeing of it through the press, with the drawing 
 and engraving of the map and numerous illustrations with 
 which it was enriched. Not, however, without an occa- 
 sional malediction over the toil and trouble of the whole 
 enterprise. " I get on slowly and sulkily as respects my own 
 
1838.] PUBLICATION OF ' SILURIAN SYSTEM.' 239 
 
 powers of digestion" (he writes, for example, to Phillips). 
 " Never will I undertake another big book of such multi- 
 farious parts ! But I must now swim through the whole, 
 or sink under the weight of my own details. I would give 
 any competent man 100 to launch my ship, but I cannot 
 trust to others." 
 
 The long delay had not been without its advantages in 
 the greater scope and accuracy which it permitted, especially 
 as regarded the second half of the work, or that which 
 treated of organic remains. It had enabled the author 
 during a series of years to gather the fruits of all the 
 criticism, the hints, and the information which the discus- 
 sions of his communications to the Geological Society 
 evoked. It allowed a steady growth of his geological ex- 
 perience before he should commit himself to the responsi- 
 bilities of an independent publication, appealing to a wide 
 circle of readers. Nor had it in any way retarded his 
 reputation ; for, as we have seen, the more salient features 
 of his continuous labours in this field, since that lucky 
 journey in 1831 to the banks of the Wye, had been given 
 year after year to the Geological Society, and through 
 the publications of the Society, as well as of the British 
 Association, had become generally known to geologists 
 all over the world. But the full account of these, and 
 notably of the wonderful series of fossils which he had 
 brought out of the old Transition rocks, had been impatiently 
 expected for several years. At last, towards the end of 
 1838, it made its appearance, a ponderous quarto volume 
 of 800 pages, with an atlas of plates of fossils and sections, 
 and a large coloured geological map. 
 
 The publication of The Silurian System, for so the work 
 
240 
 
 SIR RODERICK MURCHISON. 
 
 was entitled, forms one of the land-marks in the history 
 of geology. It gave, for the first time, a detailed view of 
 the succession of the geological formations of more ancient 
 date than the Old Eed Sandstone, with full lists, descrip- 
 tions, and figures of the animals which had peopled the 
 waters in which these early deposits were laid down. It 
 opened up a new chapter, or rather a whole series of chap- 
 ters, in that marvellous history of life which geology unfolds. 
 
 CORALS, ETC., FROM THE GRAUWACKE LIMESTONE (WENLOCK). 
 
 1. Favosites cristatus. 2. P. Gotlandicus. 3. A variety of this coral. 3*, 3**. Magnified 
 portions of two varieties. 4. Pavosites asper. 5. Alveolites Labechii. 6. Ceriopora oculata. 
 7. Favosites fibrosus ; 8. a variety encrusting shells. 
 
 Before the researches began, which found their fitting termi- 
 nation in this splendid work, men had very generally looked 
 upon the " Transition " rocks as a region of almost hopeless 
 confusion. Murchison had succeeded in making out the 
 order of their upper and most fossiliferous portions, and now in 
 his pages and plates the subdivisions of these ancient forma- 
 tions stood as definitely grouped and arranged as the orderly 
 undisturbed Secondary deposits of central England. He 
 had traced out also the sites of some of the submarine vol- 
 canoes of those early ages, and the great thickness to which 
 
1838.] PUBLICATION OF ' SILURIAN SYSTEM.' 241 
 
 the volcanic detritus had accumulated over the sea-bottom. 1 
 To give completeness to his account of the Silurian region, 
 he had likewise undertaken detailed examinations of the 
 overlying rocks, including the coal-fields and the various 
 formations up into the Oolitic series. The results of all this 
 work were now included in his volume. Rich, therefore, 
 in original research, and amply illustrated, the book well 
 deserved the encomium of the President of the Geological 
 Society (Dr. Whewell), who spoke of it, in his address, " as 
 an admirable example of the sober and useful splendour 
 which may grace a geological monograph." 2 No more 
 remarkable proof of the value of steady industry had for 
 many a year been given than was furnished by the gradual 
 elaboration of this work. " If the young student of geology," 
 so said a writer at the time, " wishes to find an example of 
 the effect of diligence and perseverance, as insuring ultimate 
 success, he cannot do better than to follow the history of the 
 'Silurian System.'" 3 It was appropriately dedicated to 
 Sedgwick. 4 
 
 1 This had been already done in Cumberland by Sedgwick among 
 rocks then supposed to be older than any part of Murchison's groups, 
 but which are now known to lie on the same Lower Silurian horizons as 
 those of Wales. See Proc. Oeol. Soc,, i. p. 400. 
 
 2 Proceedings of Geological Society, vol. iii. p. 81. 
 
 3 Edin. Rev. clxvii. 16. 
 
 4 But for the assistance of friends and fellow-labourers, the Silurian 
 System would have been a very different work from what it is. Sedg- 
 wick revised some portions of it, especially the Introduction, which he 
 induced the author in great part to re-write. Agassiz, Sowerby, and 
 particularly Lonsdale, named and described the greater part of the fossils, 
 while other friends, whose names are cited in the book, lent a helping 
 hand. But besides these coadjutors in the preparation of the volume, 
 the author had been zealously assisted, as we have seen, by active and 
 disinterested friends in the field, who had worked for him year after 
 year, and who carried on a voluminous correspondence with him. The 
 names of some of his coadjutors have been already given. He has himself 
 
 VOL. 1. Q 
 
242 SIR RODERICK MURCHISON. [isss. 
 
 During all these busy years, when the author of the 
 Silurian System was elaborating his work, and giving from 
 time to time narratives of his progress in the publications 
 of the Geological Society, the fame of his labours had spread 
 into every quarter of the globe where geology was culti- 
 vated. His term " Silurian " had been adopted and applied 
 to the rocks of different countries where similar groups of 
 fossils were found. Thus filie de Beaumont and Dufre"noy 
 in France, Boue* and De Verneuil in Turkey, Forchhammer 
 in Scandinavia, Featherstonehaugh and Rogers in America, 
 
 referred to them in the pages of his work. Bnt the confession of his 
 general obligations conveys inadequate ideas of the untiring zeal and 
 quite incalculable service of some of these friends. The Rev. T. T. Lewis, 
 of Aymestry, deserves especially to be had in remembrance, for, without 
 his generous and effective aid, both in the field and in long and admirable 
 expository letters, so full a harvest of results could not have been reaped 
 by Murchison, but must have been shared by other and later labourers. 
 (See Edln. Review, loc. cit.) 
 
 In the MS. memoranda already referred to as kindly supplied by Pro- 
 fessor Phillips, he says, " Murchison found in Mr. Lewis a man equal to 
 himself in field-work, and already master of all the local geology. I had 
 seen Mr. Lewis's collection in 1836, and often heard his praise from the 
 Silurian Chief ; but by some forgetfulness the record in the great work, 
 to the foundations of which the Vicar of Aymestry had contributed per- 
 haps more than any other man, was less full and emphatic than might 
 have been expected." 
 
 On the publication of the Silurian System, its author showed an anxiety 
 to have the work favourably reviewed, hardly worthy of his position. 
 He wrote, for example, an urgent appeal to Sedgwick to pen a criticism 
 for the columns of the Times, and afterwards another entreaty for an 
 exhaustive article in one of the quarterlies on the whole subject of the 
 older fossiliferous rocks, the grounds of the reqiiest being variously based 
 on the need of trying to regain some of the large amount of money which 
 had been expended upon the publication, on the desirability of showing 
 how necessary a knowledge of geological structure is for the development 
 of our mineral resources, on the good to geology which might be done by 
 making the ordinary reading public familiar with some of the more recent 
 researches, etc. Sedgwick in a very candid and friendly way assured 
 him that the book needed no artificial aid, and should be allowed to make 
 way on its own merits. Fitton wrote the review in the Edinburgh, and 
 drew attention to the important co-operation of Mr. Lewis. 
 
1838.] SPREAD OF SILURIAN DOMAIN. 243 
 
 had accepted his classification, and recognised Silurian 
 fossils in widely distant regions. Hence the book, welcome 
 and long-expected as it undoubtedly was, lost perhaps a 
 little of the novelty which it might otherwise have possessed. 
 We have now traced Murchison's career up to the com- 
 pletion of the great work of his life. His subsequent geo- 
 logical labours chiefly sprang out of these seven years' toil 
 among the " Transition " rocks. He went abroad to extend 
 
 O 
 
 the area of his Silurian formations, and he succeeded in 
 achieving its further increase at home. His domain of 
 "Siluria" became, in his eyes, a kind of personal property, 
 over which he watched with solicitude. Or, it might rather 
 perhaps be compared to a vast business which he had 
 established, of every original detail of which he was com- 
 plete master, and which he laboured to extend into other 
 countries, while he kept up through life a close correspond- 
 ence with those by whom the foreign extensions were so 
 abundantly and successfully carried out. How all this was 
 done remains to be told in the succeeding chapters. 
 
CHAPTEE XIII. 
 
 THE DEVONIAN SYSTEM. 
 
 WE have now to trace how it came about that another 
 chapter was added to early geological history. With the 
 view of following intelligibly how far this addition was due 
 to Murchison's labours, we may profitably take here a brief 
 retrospect of the previous progress of discovery and opinion 
 regarding the rocks from which the new chapter was com- 
 piled. 
 
 It was one of the merits of the Wernerian geognosts to 
 point out some of the more salient subdivisions in which, by 
 means mainly of mineral characters, the rocks of the earth's 
 crust may be chronologically grouped. They recognised 
 that their " Transition " series was often covered by red 
 sandstones and conglomerates, and that a younger group of 
 similar sandstones was found to rest upon magnesian lime- 
 stone or coal 1 It was in England that this distinction came 
 to be most clearly perceived, because the extensive coal- 
 fields of this country were found to separate the two series 
 of sandstones. Hence the terms Old Eed Sandstone and 
 New Eed Sandstone acquired an important economic signi- 
 
 1 It would appear, however, that the Old Red Sandstone of Werner 
 himself agrees with a part at least of what is now called Permian. 
 
1800-27.] THE OLD RED SANDSTONE. 245 
 
 ficance apart from their geological meaning, inasmuch as 
 the one lay below the coal, while the other lay above it. 
 
 The Old Eed Sandstone during the first quarter of this 
 century had been recognised over a large part of Britain. 
 It was known to occur in broken bands from the Bristol 
 Channel up northwards through the border counties of 
 England and Wales. It had been recognised coming out 
 from under the Carboniferous Limestone in the Lake 
 country. It had been followed for great distances through 
 the Lowlands of Scotland, and along the flanks of the 
 Highlands. 
 
 But though the existence of these red sandstones and 
 conglomerates had been extensively proved, little had 
 been gathered regarding their thickness, their subdivisions, 
 their fossil contents, and the general geological history of 
 which they are the records. In Scotland much good 
 observation had been made by Jameson, Boue", Macculloch, 
 Imrie, and others. In England a threefold subdivision of 
 the series was proposed by Buckland and Conybeare. 1 But 
 these rocks were still regarded as only a subordinate, and by 
 no means important, group, being by some geologists placed 
 in the Transition series, and by others with the Carboniferous 
 deposits. 
 
 A great advance was made by the conjoined labours of 
 Sedgwick and Murchison among the Old Red Sandstones and 
 Conglomerates of the north of Scotland. They showed the 
 great thickness and importance of the series, its range even up 
 to the most northern parts of our islands, and the great abun- 
 
 1 Trans. Oeol. Soc., vol. i. (2d series), p. 210. See also Weaver, op. cit. 
 p. 338. 
 
546 SIR RODERICK MURCHISON. [m-M. 
 
 dance and remarkable character of its fossil fishes. 1 It was 
 therefore with much previous acquaintance with this geologi- 
 cal group, that Murchison, in 1831, had begun to trace out 
 its development in South Wales and the adjacent parts of 
 England. The vast depth and the variety of strata which it 
 exhibited in that region, taken in connexion with its extent 
 in Scotland, had so impressed him with the importance of 
 the Old Eed Sandstone, that when he published the 
 Silurian System, he proposed, for the first time, to raise it 
 to the dignity of a distinct geological System. 2 He pointed 
 out its well-marked lithological characters and its peculiar 
 fossil treasures as grounds for clear separation. By his 
 successful search, aided by that of Dr. Lloyd of Ludlow, and 
 other observers, the fact was made known that the Old 
 Eed Sandstone of England, previously supposed to be 
 singularly barren of organic remains, did really contain a 
 number of peculiar fishes, and among them some of the 
 very same species which had been found in the Old Eed 
 Sandstone of Scotland. By this evidence he was entitled 
 more confidently than ever to group these rocks of the 
 United Kingdom in one great series, and when he found 
 that in South Wales they attained a thickness of nine or 
 ten thousand feet, he very justly insisted on their claim to 
 an independent place in the geological record. 
 
 These views, however, met with little acceptance on the 
 Continent. It was objected that with some trifling ex- 
 ceptions, as for instance in Belgium and perhaps in Eussia, 
 the so-called Old Eed Sandstone of the English geologists 
 did not exist on the mainland of Europe, and therefore that 
 it had no claim whatever to rank as a system, but could be 
 
 1 See ante, p. 144. 2 Silurian System, p. 169. 
 
1836.] SEDGWICK AND MURCH1SON IN DEVON. 247 
 
 regarded at the best as a remarkable but only local and 
 abnormal development of the upper Transition or lower 
 Carboniferous strata. There certainly seemed a good deal of 
 force in these objections, and still more in the assertions 
 which were confidently made, that the lowest rocks of the 
 Carboniferous series were found on the Continent passing 
 down into the Grauwacke, and that there was likewise a 
 blending of their respective fossils. If these assertions were 
 well founded, they proved the absence of any intermediate 
 system on the Continent, and rendered the claims of any 
 local British series to rank as a system more than 
 doubtful. 
 
 Such, in brief, was the state of this branch of geology at 
 the time of the publication of the Silurian System. "While 
 the researches out of which that work sprang were still in 
 progress, and the book itself advancing through the press, 
 its author, as already mentioned, was led to begin another 
 series of observations, which led eventually to an important 
 change in English, and indeed of European geology, and to the 
 willing recognition of that " Old Eed System " for which 
 contention had in vain been held before. 
 
 It was in the year 1836 that the observations now to be 
 followed began to be made. They were the conjoint task 
 of the two long- tried friends Sedgwick and Murchison. Up 
 to that time these geologists had been at work contem- 
 poraneously but independently among the older rocks, 
 and though Dr. Whewell, from the chair of the Geological 
 Society, spoke of their labours as "on all accounts to 
 be considered as a joint undertaking," still in actual fact the 
 two pioneers had started from wholly different points, 
 and had, as we have seen, toiled to cut out each his 
 
248 SIR RODERICK MURCH1SON. [isse. 
 
 own pathway through that vague and unknown region 
 of " Transition " rocks, which certainly seemed wide enough 
 to give them ample room for exploration without much 
 risk of trenching upon each other's ground. Sedgwick 
 had grappled with the physical structure of the rocks, 
 and, amidst enormous difficulties, had achieved success. 
 Murchison, on the other hand, had found a series of strata 
 where the physical structure was comparatively simple, and 
 which yielded such abundant store of fossils as to be capable 
 of subdivision by their means. But now, in the south- 
 west of England, the two friends were to combine their 
 methods, and to work out a difficult region by help both 
 of physical structure and of organic remains. 
 
 There was no such ambitious plan before them, however, 
 when they began their work. They had one definite point 
 to settle, viz., the age of the Culm-measures of Devonshire. 
 But in putting that matter beyond dispute, they were gra- 
 dually led into further and wider explorations, not in Devon 
 and Cornwall merely, but over a considerable area of the 
 Continent. It was by means of these labours that the 
 " Devonian System" of rocks was established. How the 
 work first took shape is best told in Murchison's own 
 words : 
 
 " The origin of this joint survey [of Devonshire] came 
 about in this way. In the preceding winter, 1 Mr. (after- 
 wards Sir Henry) De la Beche had sent up specimens of 
 small fossil plants from the culm rocks of North Devon, 
 which he described as belonging to the Grauwacke forma- 
 tion. At the evening meeting of the Geological Society I 
 opposed this view, on the ground that my Silurian rocks, 
 1 December 1834. See Oeol Soc. Proc., voL ii. p. 106. 
 
isse.] ORIGIN OF DEVONIAN CAMPAIGN. 249 
 
 both upper and lower, contained no land plants whatever. 1 
 Moreover, I thought I recognised a complete similarity be- 
 tween these common specimens of North Devon and those 
 which I had explored in the opposite coast of Pembroke, 
 and which I knew were superposed to the Millstone Grit 
 and Mountain Limestone. I therefore urged Sedgwick to 
 
 1 It is perhaps hardly worth while reverting, even in a foot-note, to a 
 personal matter which threatened to bring about a rupture of friendly 
 relations between geologists all of whom have made their mark in the 
 scientific history of their time, and who are now gone to their rest. And 
 yet the expressions in the text seem to require further explanation, more 
 especially as some of the survivors of that time may still be under the 
 belief that De la Beche was hardly used in this affair. It was asserted 
 by some of his friends that Murchison and Sedgwick had obtained posses- 
 sion of an early unpublished copy of his Ordnance Geological Survey map 
 of Devonshire ; that they had, unknown to him, gone down into his terri- 
 tory and examined his sections with the map in their hands ; that they 
 had thereafter hurried up to the Bristol meeting to make an attack upon 
 him and expose his mistakes ; and that afterwards, although their full 
 conjoint paper had not been read to the Geological Society, they procured 
 a statement and recognition of their views in the anniversary address of 
 the President. The real facts were these : When De la Beche announced 
 the discovery of plants of Carboniferous species in the " Greywacke " of 
 Devonshire, Murchison (as stated above) opposed this alleged discovery, 
 because it ran directly counter to all the evidence he had obtained in his 
 own Silurian domains as to the disappearance of Carboniferous forms of 
 life from the older rocks, and, as he wrote to De la Beche, " I could not 
 bring out my long-projected work with such a geological contradiction in 
 my face." De la Beche invited him to examine the ground for himself, 
 and gave him directions what to see, and where to see it. The map was 
 purchased in 1835 in the ordinary way from a bookseller's shop, where it 
 was sold also to other members of the Society. But it was not used on the 
 ground until the summer of 1836. Possibly, in the meantime, De la 
 Beche had begun to suspect the accuracy of these early impressions of 
 the map. When Sedgwick and Murchison came to the ground, they found 
 the facts to be as stated above. The supposed " Greywacke " turned out to 
 be merely a somewhat abnormal condition of the Coal-measures, and, in- 
 stead of occupying an anticlinal area, so as to dip under the other rocks, 
 actually lay in a great trough above them. So far De la Beche was un- 
 doubtedly wrong, and his opponents were undoubtedly right, as was after- 
 wards shown by the alteration of the Survey map in accordance with the 
 newer views. The charges of unfairness appear to have been whispered 
 about by De la Beche's friends in London, while he himself was busy in 
 
250 SIR RODERICK MURCHISON. [isse. 
 
 join ine in a campaign to settle the question. 1 He agreed to 
 do so. So off we went ; and first we looked through the 
 rocks of North Somerset, Ilfracombe, Morte Bay, Baggy 
 Point, and Barnstaple. As we went on, a good, steady, 
 southerly dip continued until we reached the edge of the 
 famous Culm tract, into and under which the older strata 
 pitched at a rapid inclination. I there saw that the game 
 was won, and, drawing a section, in which I reversed De la 
 Beche's hypothetical diagrams, I called out to Sedgwick 
 from the rock on which I was sitting, ' Here it is ! Look 
 at my section of the North Devon coal-field the youngest 
 instead of the oldest rocks of the county our job is done !' 
 Still he was a little incredulous until we advanced south- 
 wards (for I had sketched this from the north side of the 
 
 the field in the south-western counties. They were indignantly denied at 
 the time by Murchison, in a letter to De la Beche himself (6th January 
 1837), and in one to Sedgwick (2d February 1837). That De la Beche 
 was vexed to find some of the work of the Survey to be wrong was 
 natural enough, and that Murchison may have shown, as appears from 
 his narrative above, a little elation in pointing out his friend's error, 
 was also to be expected. Indeed, it would seem that he allowed himself to 
 write to Sedgwick in such a way about the alleged discovery of a Grau- 
 wacke flora in Devonshire as to call down remonstrance from his com- 
 rade. Even as far back as January 1835, that is ouly a month after De 
 la Beche's announcement, we find him acknowledging Sedgwick's com- 
 plaint thus : "You were quite right in reproving me if you thought that 
 I used any acrimony in speaking of De la Beche's discovery, but I had 
 long before obviated the possibility of such being the case on one side or 
 the other by a friendly interchange of opinions with De la Beche him- 
 self." But a perusal of the correspondence and of the published papers 
 and abstracts has convinced the writer of these lines that no unfairness 
 can be justly attributed either to Murchison or Sedgwick in the matter. 
 It may be added, that though right as to the relative position they 
 assigned to the Culm-measures, these authors were much deceived in their 
 identification of the underlying rocks with the Silurian and Cambrian 
 systems, as will be shown in the sequel. 
 
 1 In a letter of 8th February 1836, Sedgwick proposes to Murchisoa 
 and plans the tour in Devon and Cornwall. It may have been previously 
 suggested by Murchison. 
 
1836.] CULM ROCKS OF DEVON. 251 
 
 bay), and then when he saw the actual order he entirely 
 assented, saying what a crow we should have over De la 
 Beche. The truth I can only surmise to be, that De la 
 Beche, who was certainly a very able geologist, had never 
 really looked carefully at the consecutive sections in nature, 
 but seeing the Culm strata in a state of great contortion in 
 a low tract, he had presumed that they passed under the 
 higher country in the north. I also believe that he was so 
 much occupied in writing that remarkably skilful and in- 
 genious work (the best he ever wrote), Theoretical Researches 
 in Geology, that in doing so, and carrying out his first map 
 of Devon and Cornwall, he really worked very little in the 
 field." 
 
 " At the Bristol meeting of the British Association, the 
 chief business of Sedgwick and self was to establish the 
 point regarding the great change we proposed in the struc- 
 ture of Devonshire ; and though Greenough, Buckland, and 
 the old hands made some resistance, and did not like to see 
 the ancient ' Shillats ' and ' Gossans,' believed to be the most 
 ancient rocks in Britain, so modernized, it was evident that 
 truth would prevail." 
 
 After the meeting, while Murchison, as we have already 
 noted, returned to his literary toil in London, his friend and 
 coadjutor went again into the Devonshire country, and spent 
 many weeks in hard work there, so that a broad base was 
 thereby laid for the conjoint paper which it had been 
 arranged to read before the Geological Society. 
 
 But the conclusions arrived at by Sedgwick and Mur- 
 chison, though they have now been for many years part of 
 the common fund of geological knowledge, 1 were far from 
 
 1 The main point established by them was that the Culm-measures lay 
 
252 SIR RODERICK MURCHISON. [ISSG. 
 
 meeting with general acceptance at first. Some idea of the 
 opposition, or at least of Murchison's estimate of it, may be 
 formed from the following sentences in a letter to Phillips, of 
 4th January 1836 : "The paper by old Weaver was read 
 last night, and the fight is over. He has sided completely 
 with S. and self. Austen, a remarkably clever young geolo- 
 gist, is also with us ; Major Harding from the first with us. 
 The case therefore stands thus : For the old constitution 
 Greenough, De la Beche, and Parson Williams. On our side 
 are the two geologists of Great Britain who have given the 
 longest attention to the old fossiliferous strata, and their 
 opinions are supported by every man who has gone into the 
 tract to judge for himself. 
 
 " All the support expected from France has gone against 
 the ancients ; for Buckland (himself as unwilling a witness 
 as Weaver) comes back from France persuaded that Elie de 
 Beaumont's "Grauwacke coal-fields" are nothing but ordinary 
 Carboniferous deposits reposing on Silurian rocks. 
 
 " We are effecting a great reform at the Geological, to 
 save Lonsdale's life, and enable him to do his quantum of 
 duty. We split the duties Lonsdale, assistant secretary 
 and editor ; a curator to be found. E. I. M. chairman of a 
 committee to find said curator." 
 
 The " fight" alluded to in this letter, however, was merely 
 a preliminary skirmish on the reading of a memoir by 
 another member of the Society, and though valuable as 
 giving some notion of the relative strength of the parties, 
 by no means ended the warfare. Murchison counted much 
 
 at the top of the Devon rocks, and belonged to the Carboniferous system. 
 On what particular horizon in that system they should be placed does 
 not appear to be satisfactorily settled yet. 
 
1837.] SEDGWICK AS AUTHOR AND INVALID. 253 
 
 on the support of the Woodwardian Professor, who, if he 
 could only be got into such measure of health and spirits as 
 to come up to town for the purpose, would easily and 
 triumphantly rout the enemy. Thus on the 30th January 
 the following appeal left London : 
 
 " MY DEAR SEDGWICK, I worked all day yesterday to 
 make the sections, and to have them correspond with our 
 long Bristolian coupe. I was in great hopes to have your 
 despatches before now ; but I wait patiently like a lamb 
 for the sacrifice ; and sacrificed I most assuredly shall 
 be without your aid. However, I will drink the best part 
 of a bottle of sherry to screw me up to face Buckland, 
 Greenough, Yates, and the Ordnance forces which are to 
 be brought against us. In anticipation of the memoir, I 
 must take this chance of a vale from you before the fight." 
 
 Upwards of six years had elapsed since these two fellow- 
 labourers with the hammer had been leagued together with 
 the pen. The brief notice of their discovery made to the 
 British Association was meant to be merely a prelude to the 
 much fuller memoir designed for the learned audience at 
 Somerset House. Former experience, however, showed that 
 the Woodwardian Professor could not be got to move faster 
 than his wonted pace. After many delays and promises, a 
 date was fixed for the reading of this memoir. Murchison 
 duly appeared, but found neither Sedgwick nor the paper. 
 The letters which came up week after week from Cambridge 
 had brought the most touching lamentations over the exact- 
 ing claims of lectures, examinations, audits, and other Uni- 
 versity business, and hardly one of them ever failed to carry 
 a bulletin of the progress of the influenza, gout, dyspepsia, 
 nervousness, or other of the bodily ailments under which the 
 
254 SIR RODERICK MURGHISON. [1837. 
 
 writer happened to be groaning at the time, and which he 
 anathematized with whimsical fervour. Murchison's chagrin 
 was expressed next day as follows : 
 
 " 3 BRYANSTON PLACE, 2d February 1837. 
 
 " MY DEAR SEDGWICK, The part of Hamlet being omitted, 
 the play was not performed, and all the scenic arrangements 
 which I had laboured at were thrown away, though the 
 room looked splendid. The morning's arrivals certainly 
 surprised me. Ten o'clock brought me your double letter ; 
 eleven o'clock by the same mail the maps, and a little note 
 to Lyell, but in vain I looked through the parcel for the 
 document to be read. I read and re-read your letter, and 
 still I could not understand it. One thing I clearly per- 
 ceived, and with great regret, that you were seriously out of 
 sorts, and had been suffering ; so after waiting till two, I 
 journeyed down to the Society, still thinking that a third 
 package with the paper might be sent to Somerset House, 
 not so, however. These things going on ; the whole room 
 decorated for the fight ; Buckland arrived, Fitton present, 
 and a large meeting expected, what was to be done ? 
 Fitton and Lonsdale . . . counselled me to give up the 
 thing, which I resolved to do, to the very great annoyance of 
 the President [Buckland], and of all the others who came 
 to hear. .... 
 
 " I am mortified that the memoir did not come ; of 
 course I blame myself somewhat for having thrown in 
 doubts on some points, because I see that ill as you have 
 been, and without the power on my part of talking the case 
 over, we mutually misapprehended each other. But enough 
 of what is past. The thing now to consider is when to have 
 the paper out. I should certainly not wish to have it 
 
1837.] BIRTH OF FIRST DEVONIAN MEMOIR. 255 
 
 done till you are present, because we must have a fair stand- 
 up fight and knock the = and Greenough down. 
 
 " We had a good discussion on Buckland's Keuper, on 
 which Greenough and myself agreed about the absurd term 
 poikilitic, backed by old Paddy [Fitton], so the spots were 
 damned. We had a supper at Cole's, Buckland, Homer, 
 Stokes, the Viscount, Sir Phil, and my friend Eosthorn of 
 Wolfsberg, a great friend of the Archduke John's, present. 
 
 " Did you really imagine that I was to dramatize the 
 whole thing without a sermon before me ? or have you been 
 written to by Greenough or some of the dark school ? or 
 was the paper unfit to be sent ? or was it omitted by acci- 
 dent and mistake ? The President stated the last as the 
 cause, and I said not a word about it, for with Lonsdale's 
 help in construing your letter, we were unable to understand 
 it. I think that the delay occasioned by my doubts and 
 your influenza and state of the stomach are the true causes ; 
 but if you had sent it in ever so unfinished a state, the heads 
 would have been read, and an abstract made, which would 
 have served all purposes." 
 
 Summer had made some progress before the paper was 
 at last actually read to the Society. It was the first of 
 a series of memoirs upon the rocks of Devon and Cornwall, 
 and their equivalents elsewhere. 
 
 The settlement of the geological age of the Culm-measures 
 of Devonshire, though by no means an unimportant question 
 in British geology, was of small moment compared with the 
 further researches to which it led. In working out the 
 position of these rocks, the two fellow-labourers found it 
 necessary to get a base-line for their Carboniferous forma- 
 
256 SIR RODERICK MURCHISON. 
 
 tions. In other tracts of this country they would have met 
 with ordinary Old Eed Sandstone. But in Devonshire and 
 Cornwall they encountered a series of rocks which had 
 undergone so much alteration that their true position was 
 difficult to define. They were usually classed by the old 
 and uncouth term Grauwacke. In some respects they 
 resembled the old slaty masses of Wales, and at first the two 
 geologists who had come to them fresh from these Welsh 
 deposits made them out to be actually in the same geolo- 
 gical position as the middle and upper parts of Professor 
 Sedgwick's Cambrian series of North Wales. 1 A good deal 
 of limestone, with an abundance of fossil remains, distin- 
 guished these Devonshire strata. But owing to the way in 
 which the rocks had been squeezed and broken, their order 
 of succession was not easily ascertained. 
 
 Various observers, especially Mr. Hennah, Mr. (Godwin) 
 Austen, Mr. Williams, and Major Harding, had made 
 collections of the fossils, which certainly differed con- 
 siderably from those of the Silurian rocks, and quite justified 
 Murchison in deciding not to claim these strata as part of his 
 Silurian domain. Mr. Lonsdale, toward the end of 1837, after 
 an examination of various collections of South Devon fossils, 
 came to the conclusion that the rocks from which they were 
 obtained must be intermediate between the Silurian and the 
 Carboniferous series, that is, on the same general parallel as the 
 Old Eed Sandstone of other districts. 2 He was led to this 
 inference purely on palseontological grounds, because some 
 of the fossils belonged to Silurian species, while others had 
 
 1 Proc. Geol. Soc., ii. 560 (June 1837). 
 
 2 Proc. Geol. Soc., iii. 281, and Trans., 2d series, vol. v. p. 721. In this 
 memoir, the author gives references to previous authors on the rocks of 
 Devon and Cornwall. 
 
1837.] EARLY WORK OF HUGH MILLER. 257 
 
 a distinctly Carboniferous character. This idea, however, 
 was not immediately adopted by Sedgwick and Murchison, 
 for they could not get the Welsh and northern type out of 
 their minds. 
 
 While the Woodwardian Professor and the author of the 
 " Silurian System " were still groping their way among the 
 puzzling rocks which underlie the Carboniferous deposits of 
 the south-west of England, another labourer, hitherto un- 
 known, had been for many years collecting and pondering 
 
 FOSSILS OF THE MIDDLE DEVONIAN LIMESTONE. 
 
 1. Calceola sandalina. 2. Megalodon cucullatus. 3. Murchisonia bilineata. 
 4. Stringocephalus Burtini. 5. Atrypa desquamata. 
 
 over the strange fishes which lie entombed in the Old Eed 
 Sandstone of the far north of Scotland. The name of Hugh 
 Miller is now familiar wherever English literature has made 
 its way. At the time of which we are treating, it had been 
 heard of out of his own Cromarty district as that of a musing, 
 meditative stone-mason, who employed his leisure hours in 
 writing rather indifferent poetry and most graphic and 
 vigorous prose. In what other pursuits the intervals of his 
 manual labour were spent, and notably how he began to iu- 
 VOL. T. E 
 
258 SIR RODERICK MURCHISON. [isss. 
 
 terest himself and others in stones and their story, he has 
 told in his own charming memoirs. The following letter, 
 one of the earliest which he addressed to his future friend 
 Murchison, is characteristic : 
 
 " CROMARTY, 1st June 1838. 
 
 " HONOURED SIR, My friend Dr. Malcolmson of Madras 
 has written me from Paris, that he has had an interview 
 with M. Agassiz, and that that gentleman has expressed a 
 wish to see one of the fossils of a small collection which I have 
 been forming for the last few years. The Doctor also men- 
 tions to me in another letter that he had had the pleasure of 
 meeting with you in London about the middle of last spring, 
 and that you were at that time engaged in researches which 
 some of my specimens might perhaps serve to illustrate. 
 From a further remark, I infer that you too are desirous of 
 examining some of them. I herewith send a few of the 
 more portable to Agassiz, requesting him (should he be no 
 former of collections himself, which Dr. Malcolmson tells 
 me he is not) to send them to you, who deserve so well of 
 the geologists of the north, when he has looked over them. 
 Lest, however, some accident should detain them on the Con- 
 tinent, I deem it proper that you should have an opportunity 
 of examining them in the passing, and I have therefore 
 requested Mr. James Malcolmson, the Doctor's brother, to 
 forward them to your address, with which I myself am 
 unacquainted. . . . [Here follow some descriptions of 
 the fossils.] 
 
 " There is one question in connexion with these fossils 
 to which I would fain receive an answer, and which I have 
 put to Agassiz, but which you, sir, could favour me by 
 answering much sooner than I can expect to hear from. him. 
 
1838.] HUGH MILLER. 259 
 
 Is the formation in which they occur a fresh-water one, or 
 otherwise ? I have some intention at present of drawing up 
 a popular account of the geology of this part of the country 
 for a widely-circulated periodical to which I occasionally 
 contribute, and the fact in question, if an ascertainable one, 
 is essential to my purpose. Your letter, were you to favour 
 me with a very few lines on the subject, would find me in 
 Cromarty. It would afford me pleasure to forward for your 
 inspection such of my specimens as might prove of use to 
 you in your present researches. I am desirous to make my 
 little collection as complete as possible, and in no place, 
 perhaps, could it be of so much interest as in the middle of 
 the district whose oryctology it illustrates. Some of my 
 specimens, however, are in duplicate, and I need not say 
 how welcome you will be to one out of each of the pairs, 
 and to the use of all the others. Please favour me by seal- 
 ing my letter to Agassiz ere you make up the box. I do 
 not know that I have addressed that gentleman as I ought, 
 but he must just excuse the ignorance of a foreigner and a 
 provincial in the way the far-famed author of Salmonia did 
 the Frenchman who addressed him as Sirumphrydavy. I 
 am, honoured Sir, your most obedient humble servant, 
 
 " HUGH MILLER." 
 
 From Murchison's reply to this letter a few sentences 
 may be quoted : 
 
 " Although my work was intended to be exclusively de- 
 voted to Silurian (or Transition) rocks of England and Wales, 
 I have made a few allusions to other tracts, and, among 
 these, to the Old Red Sandstone of Scotland, in doing which 
 I have, in the descriptions of the organic remains, briefly 
 
260 SIR RODERICK MURCHISON. [was. 
 
 alluded to your labours. Now that I know the fidelity and 
 closeness of your research, I shall endeavour to introduce 
 another allusion in the Appendix, which is all that remains 
 imprinted. 
 
 " I am delighted with your clear and terse style of de- 
 scription, and beg to assure you, that if you could send us, 
 in the course of the summer, any general and detailed ac- 
 count of both the Sutors, and all their contents, I shall have 
 the utmost pleasure in communicating it to the Geological 
 Society, to be read at the November meeting. 
 
 " You write and observe too well to waste your strength 
 in newspaper publications, and a good digest of what you 
 have done ought to be preserved in a permanent work of 
 reference. I can give you no positive answer as to whether 
 the Old Eed Sandstone of Scotland was formed in a lake or 
 in the sea. 1 I have, however, strong reasons for believing 
 that it is a marine deposit, for in England we find marine 
 shells in it to a considerable height above the uppermost 
 beds of underlying Silurian rocks. ... I much long to 
 revisit the shores of Caithness and Cromarty with my in- 
 creased knowledge, and with the conviction that I should 
 learn so much from you, but I fear it is hopeless." 
 
 Besides abundant work and correspondence in regard to 
 Devonian geology, Murchison took a leading part in one of 
 the most prominent of the scientific doings of London in 
 this year (1838). Sir John Herschel, after an absence of 
 four years and a half at the Cape, had returned to England 
 with a rich harvest of astronomical observations. It was 
 
 1 This question, mainly from the labours of Mr. Godwin- Austen, Pro- 
 fessor T. Rupert Jones, and Professor Eamsay, can now be more definitely 
 answered, in a sense opposite to the view which Murchison favoured in 
 this letter. 
 
1838.] HIS CREED IN 1838. 261 
 
 determined by his scientific and other friends to give him a 
 public dinner, and to present him on that occasion with an 
 inscribed vase. Murchison acted as honorary secretary, and 
 to judge from the mass of correspondence which remains 
 among his papers, his post must have left him for many 
 weeks with hardly an hour of leisure. One of Herschel's 
 notes to him concludes " with repeated thanks to you for 
 all the very great trouble which this affair has caused you." 
 The gathering proved eminently successful a result in no 
 small measure due to the good management of the secretary, 
 and especially to his facility for grasping even the most 
 insignificant details, and planning the execution of them. 
 
 Before we resume the Devonian story, reference must be 
 made to the death of Mrs. Hugonin in the beginning of the 
 year 1838, and to a remarkable letter which that event evoked 
 from her son-in-law. This letter is addressed to his " dear 
 friend" Sedgwick. It was never sent, however, but remained 
 in its writer's repositories until his death. During the in- 
 terval he appears to have read the letter at least twice in 
 1857, and again in 1869 as is shown by his own hand- 
 writing on the back. It would seem, therefore, to have been 
 regarded as a record worth preserving, of the state of the 
 writer's mind at the time regarding a momentous subject, 
 on which, even up to the end of life, he was not given to 
 speak. The letter is marked outside in handwriting of a 
 late date, "My Creed in 1838." 
 
 " NTTRSTED HOUSE, PETEKSFIELD, 
 19th January 1838. 
 
 " MY DEAK SEDGWICK, I have not for the last many 
 months found an hour so vacant, that if I abstracted it from 
 the book, or any other avocation, I did not reproach myself, 
 
262 SIR RODERICK MURCHISON. [was. 
 
 so heavily has the incubus pressed upon me. Here, how- 
 ever, ... I am free to occupy an hour, and I give it to you 
 as the man of my heart. 1st, Talking of this last-mentioned 
 member of our frame in a physical sense, I must crave some 
 of that sympathy from you which I have often felt for you 
 when you have described to me your own sensations in its 
 region. The scene here has altogether been trying and 
 harassing for my wife and self several times up and down 
 from town, and, on the last occasion of my visit, I returned 
 only to Eccleston Street to hurry off Mrs. M. at a moment's 
 notice, as I feared she would be too late to close her mother's 
 eyes. This, however, was happily not the case. The old 
 lady made a wonderful rally, her mind became quite com- 
 posed, and she took the sacrament with her daughter in full 
 confidence of a change to a better world. These are agree- 
 able reflections. To-morrow I attend her body to the grave. 
 The will gives to my dear wife a most ample income for her 
 life. . . . 
 
 " I do not mean to relax one jot in my search after 
 natural knowledge ; nay, being now a free agent for the first 
 time these twenty years, I shall, I hope, be enabled to em- 
 ploy all my leisure hours more effectively in pursuing my 
 favourite study. 
 
 " But this is not enough. I have one deep-seated source 
 of personal unhappiness in my thoughts of the future. To 
 go we know not where, may be viewed calmly and resignedly 
 by many philosophers, trusting as they do to the wise dis- 
 pensations of Providence, yet unable to believe in the great 
 Atonement for the sins of man. Alas ! I am (for I need 
 scarcely confess it again to you, for you know me) one of 
 those half-instructed wandering beings who sufficiently know 
 
1838.] HIS CREED IN 1838. 263 
 
 and feel what they ought to believe, yet cannot overcome the 
 force of habit and a long-continued apathetic indifference to 
 the vital point. Doubtless I perceive much to admire, nay, 
 nothing to cavil at, in the precepts of Christ, though I can- 
 not bring my mind to acquiesce in His divinity. Still less 
 can I confide in and give my common sense to adopt all the 
 historical details of the Old Testament. You will refer me 
 
 to Paley, while , professing to be a Christian, will refer 
 
 me to Fellowes. I do not require a stimulus to induce me 
 to adopt natural religion, for I have it strongly implanted 
 in me ; and if geology has done me no other good, it has, at 
 all events, strongly fortified me in this sense. 
 
 " But here I halt. Most unwillingly it is true, for few 
 people have a higher respect for sincere believers than myself, 
 and no one would more stoutly fight for the Church, as a 
 great and essential moral engine, than myself. When, how- 
 ever, I see men of powerful minds and great integrity, who 
 are strict believers in Christ, I am roused to a perception of 
 the chance there is that the defect is in my own capacity . 
 and heart. I hope the former only. Your example has 
 made more impression upon me than all that was ever said 
 or written ; for nothing has more alienated me from Chris- 
 tian belief than the constant exposure (which history and 
 our own experience affirm) of hypocrisy, cant, and all the 
 worst passions veiled under the garb of religion. You might 
 well say to me, ' Look at home ;' for if there ever existed a 
 thoroughly pious, yet unobtrusive Christian, that person is 
 my excellent wife. Seeing the tranquillity with which she 
 views her passage from this world, and knowing how the 
 best Christian principles are ever her guides, albeit without 
 a tincture of fanaticism or exclusive sanctity, I cannot but 
 
264 SIR RODERICK MURCHISON. [uss-a. 
 
 hope that the day will come, when, striving to follow out 
 the dying wishes of my own beloved mother, I may become 
 a true believer. Alas ! I am a short way yet upon the road. 
 Ever yours, my dear friend, BOD. I. MUKCHISON. 
 
 " Having written, I looked at my confessions and was 
 about to destroy them, but this would have been giving way 
 to my own pride : so you must bear with me." 
 
 During the winter of 1838-39 Sedgwick and Murchison 
 were busy trying to get at the meaning of the Devonian 
 rocks. Lonsdale's suggestion as to the position of these 
 strata was now engaging their attention, and they sought 
 anxiously for light from further fossil evidence. Many a 
 box of specimens from Devonshire was turned out and 
 scrutinized with Sowerby and Lonsdale. It was not, how- 
 ever, until the spring of 1839 that they quite discarded their 
 previously published views of the age of the older rocks of 
 the south-west of England and adopted those of Lonsdale. 
 Even in March, Sedgwiek could still write to his friend, 
 " The Devon fossils are a great puzzle ; but I am as firm as 
 ever no Old Red in Devon." 1 
 
 The two geologists once more became fellow- workers 
 with the pen. And the consequence was, of course, a return 
 to the former kind of correspondence vehement objurga- 
 tions by the Professor on his real or imaginary ailments, 
 with whimsical accounts of his condition, shrewd criticisms 
 on his friend's writing, and earnest advice as to courtesy and 
 moderation towards opponents. The opposition to the re- 
 
 1 Mr. De la Beche's Geological Report on Cornwall and Devon appeared 
 iu 1839, full of excellent observations, but not admitting the Culm rocks 
 to be true Coal-measures, and retaining his old term Grauwacke for the 
 older rocks of that region, which were soon to be named Devonian. 
 
1839.] THE DEVONIAN BATTLE. 265 
 
 form which they wished to effect in the nomenclature of the 
 older rocks of Devon and Cornwall had not wholly subsided, 
 for there came now and then a protest or denial from the 
 other side, though the main point for which they had origi- 
 nally contended the true overlying position of the Culm- 
 measures was now so tacitly admitted as to be claimed as 
 part of the common stock of knowledge, without reference to 
 their relation to it as discoverers. The Ordnance Geological 
 Survey Report upon the district had just appeared, and irri- 
 tated them by the way in which it seemed to them to over- 
 look the important work which they had done in that part 
 of the country. They had written and published rather a 
 sharp retort upon De la Beche, 1 and the atmosphere at the 
 Geological Society was in that state when a storm such as 
 had never been experienced at Somerset House might at 
 any moment have burst forth. A paper on the Devon 
 Geology by the Rev. D. Williams, one of the opponents, was 
 announced for reading on the 10th of April. A fierce 
 battle was looked for, and the combatants and would-be on- 
 lookers came from far and near to be present. Sedgwick 
 could not attend. The good fight was therefore left to be 
 fought by his military ally, who, next day, still full of the 
 excitement, sent him the following despatch on this subject : 
 
 " llth April 1839. 
 
 " MY DEAK SEDGWICK, The fight is over. It lasted till 
 near midnight, and, all things considered, we have come off 
 
 1 Reference is made to the paper " On the Classification of the Older 
 Stratified Rocks of Devon and Cornwall," which had appeared a few days 
 before in the April number of the Philosophical Magazine. The latter 
 part of this paper is a rather angry and personal defence of the originality 
 of their work in these two counties, drawn forth by the statements in 
 De la Beche's Geological Report on the same district. 
 
266 SIR RODERICK MURCHISON. [im 
 
 remarkably well. Parson Williams, who was present, had 
 prepared an Ordnance map of Devon and Cornwall coloured 
 on his own mineralogical plan. . . . Immediately after the 
 memoir was read, De la Beche, who came up per mail for 
 the nonce, rose, and holding in his hand our memoir, com- 
 menced an exculpation of himself from the charge we bring 
 
 against him in our conclusion He spoke calmly, and 
 
 without going into the memoir of the evening. I imme- 
 diately replied by first assuring the Chair that I had no 
 hesitation in expressing my regret that a word or two had 
 been made use of in the hurry of composition which both of 
 us were sorry for. .... Disavowing the least personality, I 
 immediately got D. with me, and having thus cleared the 
 course, I opened the discussion on Williams' paper, and 
 went ' the whole hog/ as well as I could, touching the 
 Devonian case. De la Beche then replied, but did not 
 attempt to shake one of our positions, did not place a veto 
 on one of my assertions, and least of all, on that which laid 
 claim to the originality of the Culm- trough. He bothered 
 about a point or two near Chudleigh, as difficulties, and end- 
 ing by saying it was immaterial to him what the things 
 were called. 
 
 " Lyell then spoke, and very adroitly put the case as one 
 most agreeable to him, now that he perceived that Mr. 
 D. not only acknowledged that the view which we took 
 at Bristol was original, but also that he (D.) was by no 
 means indisposed to adopt our new views, which get rid of 
 all the anomalies and difficulties (about plants and fossils). 
 
 " Fitton rose in great solemnity, and with deep pathos 
 impressed on the meeting the propriety of restraining the 
 too pungent expression of controversial writing among geo- 
 
1839.] THE DEVONIAN BATTLE. 267 
 
 logical friends, alluded to my having called him ' my geo- 
 logical father,' and only wished that I had submitted the 
 paper in question to his parental revision before it was pub- 
 lished. He acknowledged, however, that the explanation 
 had quite rectified the case, and then he went on to expa- 
 tiate on the value of our doings, giving us superlative praise, 
 and bringing out Lonsdale in the foreground. 
 
 " Greenough made his oration as I expected, was very 
 ingeniously sophistical, tried to throw all into chaos, saw 
 nothing new in our views, adhered to his old belief Grey- 
 wacke for ever! and sustained old Williams by casting 
 fossil evidence overboard. 
 
 " Featherstonehaugh spoke well on the great subdivisions 
 of the old rocks of North America, and said they were dis- 
 tinctly the same as ours. 
 
 " . . . . These and many other things being said and 
 done, Buckland summed up at half-past eleven, and though 
 he evidently wished to shield De la Beche, he ended by 
 approving highly of ' Devonian ' he now saw light that 
 light he referred to W. Lonsdale, and henceforth, said he, 
 there will be two great names in English geology W. 
 Smith and W. Lonsdale; he adhered entirely to the fossil 
 evidences, did not give us the credit we deserved for our 
 coal-trough (which is the key to the whole thing), nor did he 
 do justice to my Siluriana, without which, as you have justly 
 said, no one could have started this new hare. 
 
 " The room was a bumper. Warburton, who sat it out, 
 assured me . . . that he looked upon the case as settled, as 
 it was quite evident that Buckland had completely given in, 
 De la Beche was ready to do so, and Greenough alone held 
 out, standing like a knight-errant upon his ' antiquas vias.' 
 
268 SIR RODERICK MURCHISON. [is. 
 
 " I liad forgot to tell you that Lord Northampton also 
 spoke to a point of conciliation ; in fact, there was too much 
 of this, for I sat next to De la Beche, never lost my temper 
 for an instant, asked him to dine with me, and all ended 
 4 a 1'aimable/ and would have done so without any of the 
 surpassing efforts of these ' good Samaritans.' 
 
 " Buckland was particularly happy in assisting to de- 
 molish ' Greywacke ' by pulling old Greenough up, who with 
 himself had declared a mass of rock in the Alps to be good 
 ' grauwacke' which proved to be full of Tertiary shells; 
 that he had seen very good ' grauwacke ' in oolites, in red 
 sandstone, in coal in short, in everything, and therefore he 
 did think with Conybeare that it was ' Jupiter quodcunque 
 vides/ and agreed with us in the fitness of using it hereafter 
 entirely as an adjective or expletive. Q. E. D. 
 
 " It was right well that I was not absent in Paris, or 
 things in your absence also might have gone pro tempore 
 against us. Ever yours, EOD. I. MURCHISON." 
 
 A fortnight later the two Knights of Cambria and Siluria 
 were ready with their own conjoint paper on their change of 
 view regarding the geological position of the rocks in Devon 
 and Cornwall a change which had afforded one of the 
 most effective shafts to their opponents in the contest. 
 
 In this memoir the term Devonian was proposed as a 
 substitute for Old Eed Sandstone, to include the rocks 
 lying between the Silurian and Carboniferous systems. 1 
 The authors, accepting Lonsdale's suggestion, boldly applied 
 it not merely to the limestone of South Devon, to which he 
 
 1 The first publication of this proposed new geological subdivision 
 appears to have been that in the Phil. Mag. for April 1839, p. 259. 
 
1839.] GEOLOGICAL NOMENCLATURE. 269 
 
 originally restricted it, but to all the old slaty rocks of both 
 Devon and Cornwall, and even expressed an anticipation 
 that it might be found capable of application on the Con- 
 tinent. To quote their own words, adopted by Dr. Buck- 
 land, this was " undoubtedly the greatest change which had 
 ever been attempted at one time in the classification of 
 British rocks." l 
 
 It was, without question, a most important change in 
 geological nomenclature, and before long it met with recog- 
 nition and adoption all over the world, insomuch that the 
 term " Devonian " came to be as familiar a term as Silurian or 
 Cambrian had become. And yet we must admit that, though 
 exceedingly ingenious, it was based rather on what seemed 
 probable than what had been proved to be the case. Had the 
 authors simply declared that their Devonian rocks occupied 
 a place somewhere between the base of the Coal-measures, 
 or upper part of the Mountain-Limestone and the Silurian 
 system, their position would have been unassailable. Their 
 identification, however, of the Devonian slates, limestones, 
 and sandstones, as the true equivalents of the Old Eed 
 Sandstone of other regions, left out of sight the fact that 
 a great thickness of Lower Carboniferous rocks was on this 
 view unrepresented in the south-western counties, and hence 
 that a portion at least of their Devonian series might really 
 be Carboniferous. Many years afterwards, as will be told 
 in a later chapter, this now obvious objection was started 
 and argued with great vigour and cogency by the late Mr. 
 Jukes. 
 
 So greatly have the rocks in Devon and Cornwall been 
 disturbed since their formation, that even now, though they 
 
 1 Trans. GeoL Soc., 2d Ser., v. 691, and Proc., iii. 226. 
 
270 SIR RODERICK MURCH1SON. [IK. 
 
 have been examined over and over again by geologists with- 
 out number, considerable dispute is still held over their 
 true structure. In their memoir to the Geological Society, 
 Sedgwick and Murchison indicated that what they had made 
 out among these cleaved and fractured rocks might not 
 improbably explain some parts of Continental geology, 
 and there was likewise the probability of new light being 
 obtained from the foreign rocks to clear up the obscu- 
 rities still remaining at home. They had even stated their 
 intention of personally seeking information on these points. 
 Murchison began to think of putting this proposal into 
 practice, and talked at one time of Scandinavia, at another 
 of Belgium, or of the south of Ireland, and again of the 
 Eifel and Westphalia, as the proper ground to begin upon. 
 He urged his colleague to make the tour a conjoint one, and 
 pressed upon him the needfulness of trying to break loose 
 from the ties which seemed to bind him too closely to Cam- 
 bridge or the Chapter of Norwich. Thus, early in the spring 
 he wrote, " I was glad to see your handwriting, albeit you 
 wrote in a state of exhaustion. Allow me, as your true 
 friend, to urge you to make more than an ordinary effort 
 without delay to shake off the Norvichian trammels to 
 such an extent as will enable you to do that something more 
 in field-geology without which your labours are incom- 
 plete and your general views cannot be established. You 
 say you are junior in the Chapter, but surely you can con- 
 trive to get off for one year a month earlier than usual .... 
 Pray, therefore, make your arrangements so that you WILL 
 take your fling ' coute que coute.' " 
 
 Three weeks later his feelings were expressed to the same 
 correspondent as follows : " I am so sick of the town, and 
 
1839.] PROPOSES A TOUR WITH SEDGWICK. 271 
 
 so oppressed with the feeling that I ought to be at worlc> 
 that somewhere I will go in the middle of May. I may, 
 however, defer my Scandinavian tour if I can meet with no 
 playfellow; for in those cold and dreary wilds a solitary 
 tour is out of the question. Belgium, the Ardennes, the 
 Eifel, Taunus, and Harz may be a substitute, and most of 
 this I can work away in until you join me, for I gather from 
 your letter that some portion of this country is your aim. I 
 must be at Birmingham, but I shall make it a stepping- 
 stone to Ireland, where I shall remain till the rains drive me 
 out. Thus we may unite at points of essential interest." 
 
 On the 7th April, having meanwhile changed his plans 
 again and again, he wrote once more to Sedgwick about the 
 foreign tour, thus : " Your letter reached me at Christ 
 Church before we left the Bucklands yesterday, where we 
 
 passed three pleasant days I stuck like wax to B. 
 
 to get knowledge from him about Normandy and Brittany, 
 and ended by carrying off his maps and two or three sheets 
 
 of memoranda You call me a weathercock, and so I 
 
 am, but, I hope, for the only object about which I occupy 
 myself in the world. My plan is now definitively arranged. 
 On the 1st May or a few days after, start for Antwerp 
 and Liege floor that tract in a week with Dumont and 
 D'Omalius and Buckland's section ; traverse by Spa and make 
 a round to Treves, perhaps taking a peep at the west 
 side of the Eifel and back to Paris ten days there before 
 any of the savans have left it, fill myself with knowledge 
 and buy all maps, etc. ; down straight to Caen, and there 
 meet Adam Sedgwick in first week of June at latest, and 
 commence work forthwith by the coasts of Normandy 
 amid the Silurians. In two months we shall have gutted 
 
272 SIR RODERICK MURCHISON. [im 
 
 everything, and bagged as many ' chouans ' in La Vendee as 
 we please. It would be quite useless for you to go to Paris 
 and lose time. I will get the lesson for us, and we shall do 
 the trick quickly ; back to Birmingham for the 26th, and 
 in the first week of September over to Ireland, where C. 
 Hamilton and Griffiths will throw us in three weeks into 
 every good cover, and we shall be home again for October 
 shooting." 
 
 In spite, however, of the minute detail of this " defini- 
 tively arranged " plan, it was in the course of a week or two 
 completely changed. The final arrangement settled that the 
 two old friends and fellow-labourers should once more wield 
 their hammers together on the banks of the Ehine. The chief 
 point to be ascertained was whether or not there existed on 
 the Continent a series of rocks having a peculiar assemblage 
 of fossils, and passing upwards into the base of the Carboni- 
 ferous and downwards into the top of the Silurian rocks. 
 If such a series could be found it would amply justify the 
 Devonian nomenclature. 
 
 Murchison started first. Taking Paris on his way, he 
 there attended a meeting of the French Geological Society, 
 of which he had now become a member, and had a fight 
 with some of his scientific friends over the claims of the 
 so-called Devonian rocks to the dignity of being styled a 
 " system." He stuck to his point, however, here as well 
 as elsewhere, and, notwithstanding objections and protests, 
 both at home and abroad, succeeded in establishing it in the 
 general geological literature of his time. 
 
 The halt at Paris was brief. Before the end of May the 
 work had been begun in the heart of Ehineland. From 
 Treves, Murchison wrote to his wife : " ' In fine respiro,' as 
 
1839.] CAMPAIGN IN RHINELAND. 273 
 
 I said to myself whilst I walked up yesterday under the 
 fine beech-trees from the little frontier station, and found 
 myself in Prussian land, fairly free of the ' Grande Nation ' 
 and all its lies, emeutes, and bombast. Thank God I am now 
 in a country I like (people and landscape, with geology 
 of all sorts in the fore and background). I blessed the first 
 glimpse of the vine-tending nymphs, with their Swiss-like 
 broad-topped white caps, and the men with their round 
 slouch-hats, honest German faces, and great jack-boots. 
 Thenceforward all was changed for the better capital 
 macadamized roads everywhere, postilions with horns; 
 the Prussian arms and eagle marking discipline, order, and 
 comfort everywhere. 
 
 " I leave to-morrow morning in a little carriage which I 
 hire (I shall buy one at Frankfort, where they are excellent) 
 passing to Bingen on the Rhine, by Oberstein and Kreuznach 
 to Frankfort. I am here in Cambrian and Longmynd rocks, 
 with overlying red sandstone and muschelkalk. Portez vous 
 bien. I wish you were with me, and that we had to pass 
 three or four months quietly in this delightful country, to 
 which I hope indeed we may return, for I shall have plenty 
 to do another year." 
 
 From Frankfort on 2d June he informs Mrs. Murchison, 
 " I have bought a Vienna carriage, and a very nice one, which 
 I hope will please the Professor. Finding by his letter of this 
 day that he does not leave London till the 12th, I had almost 
 resolved running away to the Fichtelgebirge to see Count 
 Miinster and his collections, and to make a section of that 
 chain, where I believe there is much Devonian ; but second 
 thoughts have convinced me that it is better to do one thing 
 well than two things badly. So I stick to the right bank 
 
 VOL. i. s 
 
274 SIR RODERICK MURCHISON. [iss. 
 
 of the Khine, the contents of which I hope to sweep out so 
 as to fill two portmanteaux (now empty among my carriage 
 boxes), and send them off to Lonsdale's care before the 
 Professor meets me at Bonn." 
 
 Meschede on the Ruhr, June 1839. "Having finished 
 my ' Abendessen,' consisting of a fresh trout, some asparagus, 
 and eggs, I am now smoking my pipe in a very neat clean: 
 room overshadowed with trees in this little town of the 
 Lower Ehine, which doubtless you never heard of before. 
 This morning I came hither by Alpe and Bolstein. I have 
 now gone clean across the- region, and have looked into the 
 zoological and mineralogical contents of each zone of rocks, 
 as well as their geological relations. What I have to say 
 will surprise you. I do not believe there is a Silurian bed 
 among them, and I am more than disposed to think that the 
 whole is Devonian, except, perhaps, the westward flanks. 
 There are no Eifel fossils here. The limestones are undis- 
 tinguishable from those of Plymouth and North Devon, and 
 the organic remains are all of the same classes which occur 
 in those rocks Goniatites, large Spirifers, etc. To a person 
 bothering and losing himself in details, the geometry of the 
 countr} r is puzzling, as the same zones are repeated several 
 times, both on the north-west and south-east side of the 
 axis. To-morrow I march upon Arnsberg, and thence into 
 the Diisseldorf coal-field. If my conjectures are right, I shall 
 find there Devonian passing conformably under it, and I 
 shall then retraverse to Cologne and Bonn, and prove the 
 case again by other sections. So that, when Sedgwick joins 
 me, I flatter myself that part of the campaign (and which I 
 always thought would be the key to the whole thing) will 
 be in my pocket, and I shall have swept the right bank of 
 
im] IS JOINED BY SEDGWICK. 275 
 
 the Rhine. So much for unfortunate Grauwacke and all its 
 Kieselschiefer and Dachschiefer, in the midst of which I am 
 writing. . . . You need not boast too much of my geologi- 
 cal hits, as some of them may fail." 
 
 The caution in the last sentence of this extract was not 
 unneeded. For the writer had evidently determined to do 
 as clever a piece of geological strategy as he could before 
 his equal in command should join, and he was naturally 
 desirous to make his sections bear out the interpretation 
 which they first suggested to him. But he had already gone 
 wrong in some of his notes, and further errors and correc- 
 tions were in store for him. 
 
 After about a fortnight of such marching and counter- 
 marching in search of a good base-line of operations for 
 further conjoint movements, he was joined by the Pro- 
 fessor. We resume the extracts from the letters to Mrs. 
 Murchison. 
 
 Bonn, 15th June. " If I have my own way I shall not 
 go near France again this season, at least not till the autumn, 
 and after Birmingham. 1 The mine I have opened here is 
 well worth all our time and attention, particularly when 
 coupled with the Harz and the other ' transition ' tracts of 
 N.-W. Germany. 
 
 " As I was sitting under the linden-tree with Oeyen- 
 hausen and his lady, not forgetting old Noggerath, up walked 
 the Professor, and after drinking several jorums of 'Mai- 
 trank,' he is now gone to bed. He is delighted with what I 
 have done. I have already convinced him that our whole 
 summer's work will and must be in Germany. We have a 
 grand field before us, and I have already provided a certain 
 
 1 The British Association Meeting of 1839 at Birmingham. 
 
276 SIR RODERICK MURCHISON, [iss. 
 
 key. In this case I shall return by Belgium in the middle 
 of August, and after settling Birmingham and our household 
 affairs, may make a run of three or four weeks to settle the 
 French affair, which is in a nutshell." 
 
 Gottingen, 24A June. " Since I wrote to you at Bonn 
 only a week ago, we have done stout work, and travelled 
 over much ground. I took Sedgwick back to my key, and 
 satisfied him of all the main points, which are, indeed, as 
 clear as noonday, and we have since been puzzling out some 
 minor difficulties, with which we shall have to contend when 
 we revisit the region of the Rhine. ... A most capital 
 tdble-d'hdte seems to have put the Professor into working 
 order. I hope, therefore, that in a few days we shall hear 
 no more of his dyspeptic symptoms, which far exceed in 
 variety any which I ever troubled you with. He is, how- 
 ever, in very good spirits, and we get on famously. I have 
 become very rubicund and jolly, as I always do on work, 
 with hands as brown as a gipsy's." 
 
 Ballenstddt, 1st July. " We have, thank our stars! nearly 
 cleared the Harz ; and, though the weather has been of the 
 most oscillating nature, with severe frowns, we have had 
 some charming smiles, which enabled us to do our work and 
 peep into three of the most lovely valleys the Lauterthal 
 near the western end of the chain, the Okkerthal near Goslar, 
 and the Bodethal, about ten miles west of this place. . . . 
 Sedgwick is as well as I ever knew him, eats, drinks, and 
 digests like a Hercules, and is in great force. Indeed, we 
 are both quite well, though the weather is most untoward, 
 and fresh storms are gathering around. The geology of the 
 Harz is very interesting, but complicated. . . . We sleep 
 in a fresh Principality daily. All the kings and dukes of 
 
1839.] HOUSE IN BELGRAVE SQUARE. 277 
 
 Germany seem to have slices of the Harz, and their respective 
 strips of land run towards the Brocken, like the spokes to 
 the box of a wheel." 
 
 Frankfort, 15th July. " We have now done the Fichtel- 
 gebirge ; and as we travelled here almost without stopping 
 I have been my own bagman. Count Miinster was all 
 attention, and his museums delighted us. The Upper Fran- 
 conian geology was not quite so good as might have been ; 
 but we did all that could have been done. The rocks are 
 two-thirds Devonian, and some Carboniferous no Silurian." 
 
 While these labours were in progress in Germany, other 
 transactions, involving a good deal of Murchison's future 
 comfort, were going on in London. Mrs. Murchison, with 
 the full sanction of her husband, was negotiating for the 
 sale of their house, now in Eccleston Street, and for the 
 purchase of the well-known Belgrave Square mansion, in 
 which he spent the last thirty- two years of his life, and which 
 in his occupancy of it formed one of the hospitable scientific 
 centres of London. This purchase is alluded to in the next 
 letter of the series. 
 
 Ems, Coblenz, 27th July. " The furnishing of our grande 
 maison may be done so leisurely as not to fatigue you, and 
 I trust we shall be there for the rest of our lives. At all 
 events, you will have a good airy palace to live in, even should 
 I prefer this tramping life, which I am destined to lead for 
 the few years of bodily activity which remain for me, should 
 I survive to middle age. 
 
 " Our last traverse to and fro through the Nassau country 
 has answered in some respects. We were both highly de- 
 lighted with the work on both banks of the Rhine, between 
 Bingen and Coblenz, which we performed in boats, carriages, 
 
278 SIR RODERICK MURCHISON. [im. 
 
 and on foot, disdaining all the smoking steamers. Here we 
 are for the day, in this most picturesque watering-place by 
 far the prettiest of all the Ehenish baths, and doubly inter- 
 esting to me, because here the first true Silurian rocks which 
 I have seen in any part of Germany on the further bank of 
 the Ehine are in great force fine scarps and lots of fossils." 
 
 Deutz, 31st July. " "We have made our last round in the 
 Westphalian region and the right bank of the Ehine, and we 
 are now on our way into the Eifel, in which, after certain 
 zigzags, we shall reach Treves. I have little worthy to 
 communicate except on geological subjects, and on these 
 little new. In fact, I am quite tired of this bank of the Ehine, 
 and am most anxious to break ground on the opposite. The 
 only thing which annoys me in my work is, that although 
 'we have got excellent descending sections from the coal- 
 measures to the bottom of the Devonian or Old Eed system, 
 into which all the greywacke of the right bank of the Ehine 
 falls, still not a trace can I obtain of Ludlow, though the 
 Wenlock appears on points, and thus we want the connexion 
 which exists in England. It is this which we are to find 
 in the Eifel and the Ardennes. ... I am swollen out like a 
 German, with hands as brown as tanned leather." 
 
 As one of the General Secretaries of the British Asso- 
 ciation, Murchison required to be present at the meeting, 
 -which this year had been fixed for Birmingham. Very 
 unwillingly he quitted the field-work on the Continent and 
 hurried to London. Before joining his colleague in the 
 Secretariate, Professor Phillips, he found time to send him 
 a brief report of his doings with Sedgwick. 
 
 London, 18th August. "I arrived last night from Lie"ge, 
 ,in thirty hours, having left Sedgwick on the Meuse, in full 
 
1839.] WITH SEDGWICK IN EHINELAND. 279 
 
 cry with D'Omalius and Dumont. I am happy to tell you 
 that the Devonian system now rests on a basis quite 
 unmoveable, and that the coal-field of Devon will after this 
 promulgation of our new data, never more be contested. 
 Even the sturdy Williams will be swept away ! It was the 
 observance of the leading facts of the case during my first 
 month's work, which led me to form a decided opinion that 
 Sedgwick and myself ought to give up one whole summer to 
 the establishment of our views, by devoting ourselves entirely 
 to the Ehenish Provinces and Germany ; and no sooner did 
 he see the outlines of the case than we resolved to abandon 
 Brittany, at all events till the autumn, and to stick more to 
 the classic regions of our science, in which as yet the alphabet 
 of the oldest strata remained to be pointed out. To the 
 Ehenish Provinces we have added the Harz and the Fichtel- 
 gebirge, and I return, after having travelled the better part 
 of 3000 miles, and satisfied with the results." 
 
 Next day, full of his new work, he could not refrain from 
 introducing it thus in a note to his friend Whewell : " To 
 tell you of all the wonderful exploits of the Cambrian and 
 Silurian knights, and how many a dreary rock of grauwacke 
 they tapped before one of their followers could be found, 
 must remain for another day. Grand, however, is the 
 Devonian field on the Ehine, the Harz, and the Fichtelge- 
 birge. So you see we have been moving." 
 
 The geological doings at the Birmingham meeting of the 
 British Association proved somewhat tame. No great 
 paper made its appearance. Perhaps the most important 
 communication in Section C was Murchison's own account 
 of what Sedgwick and he had done on the Ehine and in 
 .Westphalia. But that account was necessarily incomplete, 
 
280 SIR RODERICK MURCHISON. [isso. 
 
 and even inaccurate, seeing that the work had not been 
 brought to a close, and the later rambles of the autumn led 
 the two explorers in some respects to modify their earlier 
 conclusions. The attention of geologists had now been 
 seriously awakened to this settlement of the true age and 
 meaning of the " Devonian System." Several other labourers 
 were in the field, and there could now be no doubt that 
 the problems would not be thrown aside until their solu- 
 tion had been found. 
 
 A shade of sadness hung over the gathering of the 
 geologists at Birmingham. The day before they met, Wil- 
 liam Smith died. He had lived to see his work bearing 
 abundant fruit in every corner of the globe, and now, full of 
 years and honours, he left the harvest to be gathered by 
 younger generations. 
 
 At the close of the Association meeting Murchison hastened 
 to the Continent again. Before rejoining Sedgwick, however, 
 he went to Boulogne to attend the " Reunion extraordinaire " 
 of the Geological Society of France, which was held this year 
 in that town. He had instructions from Mrs. Murchison, 
 that while discussing " Devonians " and dinners with his 
 French acquaintance, he should take this opportunity of 
 obtaining some additional furniture for the "airy palace" 
 in Belgrave Square. Here is a part of his report to her : 
 
 Boulogne sur Mer, 1 2th Sept. "Having been out daily 
 from half-past five till dark, I have had no time for ' furni- 
 ture ' thoughts. It so happens that owing to my having 
 more knowledge of the older rocks than other geologists here, 
 I have been obliged to become a sort of cicerone and orator, 
 and yesterday evening, in the great library, the Mayor of 
 Boulogne and many French present, I delivered myself of an 
 
1839.] RENEWAL OF RHENISH FIELD-WORK. 281 
 
 hour of Silurianism, and explained the relation of the old 
 rocks of this country. The effect of my discourse was to 
 destroy the coal-boring mania in rocks of Silurian age. 
 They have a poor little coal-field here which lies low in the 
 Carboniferous Limestone group, and this being immediately 
 recumbent on my Silurian schists and shales, they have 
 (their little upper concerns being about done up) been 
 poking at great expense, and with the money of unfortunate 
 shareholders, into my Stygian abysses. The 'actions' or 
 shares fell 50 per cent, by my speech, and, notwithstanding 
 that I told unpleasant truths, I was warmly applauded. 1 
 I should have been off to-day, but I was so pressed on all 
 sides to remain that the departure was postponed till to- 
 morrow, when I proceed [with De Verneuil] by Calais." 
 
 Bonn, \<dth Sept. "We arrived here yesterday afternoon 
 (i.e. M. De Verneuil and myself). I was delighted to find at 
 Spa my little old vehicle, which Sedgwick had left there. 
 As for the chaise seat, he had carried away the key, but on 
 breaking it open we found his lest coat, some maps and 
 books, and a long well-used and highly-scented tobacco- 
 pipe, all in harmonious keeping. 
 
 " We found S. waiting for us, having just returned from 
 an expedition up the Ehine. He is in very good health and 
 spirits, and this afternoon we shall take the field a valiant 
 triumvirate, our force being strengthened by De Verneuil's 
 good knowledge of organics of the older rocks ; but whither 
 we shall march, ' Dio lo sa.' I find Sedgwick much bothered 
 and disconcerted about many essential geological points, 
 
 1 From the official report of the Society's meetings, however, it would 
 appear that his views as to the impossibility of finding coal in the 
 older rocks were not unreservedly accepted by his scientific brethren. 
 See Bulletin de la Soc. G6ol., torn. x. p. 417. 
 
'282 SIR RODERICK MURCHISON. [is. 
 
 and much disposed to go into a ' chaotic ' state, but I 
 hope we shall put up our horses and come to some clear 
 general conclusions in spite of the apparent hotch-potch 
 of this volcanized country. 
 
 " The Walloons are an odd, mongrel people ; the country 
 hideous high bleak moors, with all the features of the 
 worst parts of the Highlands, and no redeeming grouse. 
 We slept at a great farm-house converted into a sort of 
 caravansary inn. We had storms and wet in passing 
 through the Eifel." 
 
 Lutzerath in the Eifel, 8th Octr. " I have been a lazy 
 correspondent, but a most active workman. The days are 
 short, and though up daily at five (by candle-light) we are 
 soon benighted. Yet, with all, since I wrote we have done 
 a great deal From Coblenz we journeyed by the river to 
 Limburg on the Lahn, and thence passed over the Wester- 
 wald, a high basaltic region, to Dillenberg, where we had a 
 famous excursion on foot, headed by a little broad-shouldered 
 clever Prussian bergmeister, who, booted and spurred, led the 
 way (pipe in mouth and hammer in hand), followed by S., 
 De Verneuil, and myself and an English miner. We got 
 
 many additional fossils At Limburg De Verneuil 
 
 took leave of us to run through the Eifel quickly to Paris. 
 He is an excellent companion, and of a charming temper, 
 never making a difficulty, and a thoroughly gentlemanlike 
 Frenchman ; how different from a sulky Bull ! Take 
 this for an example : His travelling equipage, consisting of 
 a little leather bag (the size of a shooting bag) was left be- 
 hind at one of our stations. This was forgotten before we 
 Teached our next post, where, caressing a great German 
 pointer, the animal flew at him and bit his lip through. A 
 
1839.] DE VERNEUIL. 283 
 
 little eau de vie cured the wound, and on we travelled, he 
 as merry as ever, and ready again to play with the next dog 
 at the next inn. Arrived at Dillenberg, where the inn is 
 kept by an old Frenchman with three or four daughters, De 
 Verneuil was soon at the old piano, delighting the girls with 
 new versions of all the last Parisian airs (he plays very well), 
 and in ten minutes the gayest Mademoiselle was in full zest 
 at a duet with him one of Strauss's last waltzes. Without 
 a shirt, without a razor, without shoes, nothing daunted, he 
 was up at daybreak, and ready before us for the field, 
 equipped in one of the old innkeeper's pairs of trousers and 
 a pair of thick shoes. Beaching home, his thin boots and 
 pantaloons were ready. A village barber shaved him, and 
 being invited to dine out with the young English miner 
 and his sisters, De Verneuil completely beat Sedgwick and 
 myself in his toilet, notwithstanding our trunks and bags. 
 I was quite sorry to lose him, and I believe he equally 
 regretted to quit us. He has been of great use, from his 
 intimate knowledge of species, and I think we have been of 
 use to him in geology." 
 
 . . The work was now prolonged into the Eifel, where 
 further mingled interest and difficulty met the travellers. 
 The autumn had been making rapid strides towards winter, 
 as dark mornings and early nights reminded them. There 
 were problems in that strange region of ancient slates and 
 modern volcanoes which they could then find no means of 
 solving. Nevertheless they considered that they had 
 achieved enough for one season. And so quitting the 
 grauwacke rocks of 'the Eifel and the marvellous volcanic 
 cones which overlie them, they dropt down the Moselle by 
 .small boat, hammering here and there by the way, and send- 
 
284 SIR RODERICK MURCHISON. [im 
 
 ing their carriage by the road. The next letter reports as 
 follows : 
 
 " I now write from the middle of the ' Herzog von Nassau' 
 steamer, floating down the Rhine, and within an hour of 
 Diisseldorf. We had a most charming voyage in our little 
 cock-boat down the Moselle, and reached Coblenz last evening 
 with heads full of grauwacke and lordly castles and dark 
 gorges. To-morrow will see us at work in Westphalia for 
 the last time our third visit to some spots. We may 
 occupy three, but perhaps only two, days in this work, and 
 then we may sail for England from Rotterdam on the 15th 
 or 1 6th, and reach London on the 1 7th." 
 
 Soon after their return to England Murchison sent a long 
 account of their autumn campaign to their common friend 
 Phillips. From that letter it is evident enough that the 
 writer did not feel over-confident in some parts of their 
 recent Continental work, and indeed, that in certain main 
 parts his colleague and he were not yet in agreement. But 
 they had still a great series of specimens to be critically 
 examined and compared with those from Devon and Corn- 
 wall Much of the winter and early spring was given to 
 this task, with the effective and indeed indispensable assist- 
 ance of such friends as Lonsdale, Sowerby, and Phillips. 
 As the boxes were one by one examined, alternate light and 
 darkness passed over the minds of the examiners. At one 
 moment the field-work which seemed to have been so 
 decisively settled by the two geologists began to look doubt- 
 ful, then it grew more than doubtful, then it seemed all 
 right again, and finally it had in part to be discarded as the 
 true reading of the fossils came bit by bit intelligibly out of 
 the examination. Sedgwick remained at Cambridge, but he 
 
1839.] DEVONIAN DOUBTS AND DIFFICULTIES. 285 
 
 had from time to time copious bulletins of progress from 
 Belgrave Square. The following extracts may serve as a 
 specimen : 
 
 "Deer. 8, 1839. MY DEAR SEDGWICK, I have been 
 intending to write to you for some days to keep you au 
 courant of the examination of our 'kists* and their 
 contents, and of the views which have been gradually 
 opened out in my mind, and which have now brought 
 me back to the status ante bellum, or, in other words, to the 
 same condition of mind, or nearly so, in which I was when 
 you joined me on the Khine." 
 
 [Here follow eleven pages of detail regarding the 
 bearings of the fossil evidence on different parts of their 
 work in Germany.] 
 
 "Thank God ! I now see daylight again. All our 
 follies proceeded from our attending to these cursed min- 
 eralogists and gentlemen who deal in 'symetrie de 
 position,' whose doctrines will now, I bless my stars, go 
 by the board. 
 
 " Do not think me cra2y, for if this letter is too short to 
 lead you into your former true path, I hope the 'pieces 
 justificatives ' [i.e. the fossils] which cover my whole rooms 
 will do so. 
 
 " What we ought to do is to write a memoir on the right 
 bank of the Ehine, viz., Westphalia and Nassau, with illus- 
 trations of similar tracts in the Harz and Ober Frankwald 
 (Fichtelgebirge), and I pledge my life that if plain facts be 
 laid before plain geologists, there will be no escape from my 
 present induction. 
 
 " Adieu once more redivivus, although you had well- 
 nigh killed me." 
 
286 SIB RODERICK MURCHISON. [i84o: 
 
 The result of these laborious deliberations was at last 
 a complete accord on all the main features of the question, 
 and the consequent elaboration of another great paper for 
 the Geological Society. 1 We get a characteristic picture 
 of Murchison in the following account of these prepara- 
 tions : 
 
 Feb. 25, 1840. "MY DEAR PHILLIPS, I thank you for 
 Austen's list, as (if to be depended on) it adds one or two good 
 clenching fossils to a list already too strong to admit of any 
 doubt as to the identity of the uppermost Grauwacke 
 system of the Continent and the ' Devonian ' as defined by 
 Sedgwick and myself. 2 I have arrived at this conclusion for 
 many months, and only waited the coming to town of my 
 colleague to open the campaign. Now that he has been 
 here, and that we are all agreed, the course is clear, and we 
 shall soon give a grand memoir to show that the uppermost 
 Grauwacke of both banks of the Ehine, as well as the 
 three members of Dumont's Terrain anthraxifire (supposed 
 by him to be Silurian), as well as the major part of the Harz 
 and of the Fichtelgebirge, are true Devonian, passing up into 
 Carboniferous strata, and reposing on Silurian. ... I am 
 now highly delighted in having insisted on the ' Old Red ' as 
 a system, and on my prophecy of what it would turn out in 
 fossils. I too, however, have made my little mistakes, and I 
 will thank you to allow me to amend some words in my 
 
 1 On the Classification and Distribution of the Older Rocks of North 
 Germany, etc., read 13th and 27th May 1840, and published in vol. vi. of 
 the second series of the Society's Transactions. 
 
 2 This was one of the points on which perfect unanimity was not reached 
 until after the two fellow-travellers returned to this country, Sedgwick 
 having a suspicion that the rocks of Rhineland and Westphalia, which 
 Murchison was inclined to rank as Devonian, were really Upper Silurian. 
 The grounds of this suspicion, and the difficulty of forming a satisfactory 
 conclusion, are well stated in the paper last quoted (op. cit., p. 226). 
 
1840.] VISIT TO PARIS. 287 
 
 communication at Birmingham. 1 Again, in returning by 
 Boulogne I gave a field lecture, and, supposing that De 
 Verneuil, Dumont, and others were right in Silurianizing 
 these tracts, I chimed in with the error without looking for 
 fossils. 
 
 " I am going to Paris in ten days to read a memoir on 
 the Boulonnais, all the fossils of which have been sent to 
 me, and they clearly Devonianize it. ... "We propose our 
 triple subdivision of Devonian, Silurian, and Cambrian for 
 Europe. Buckland has given currency to our views in his 
 speech, and Greenough has closely imitated our reform of 
 Devon and Cornwall. So at last all is settled as to the great 
 boundaries." 
 
 The brief visit to Paris, alluded to in this letter, proved 
 to be a pleasant, and by no means unprofitable one. Dinners 
 at the embassy, soirees, evenings at the opera, and other 
 amusements, helped to dilute the draught of science which 
 Murchison had been quaffing so vigorously for so many 
 months. His letters convey a droll jumble of mingled 
 science and festivity. Writing to Mrs. Murchison (April 4), 
 he describes a soiree at Lady Granville's. " There I saw 
 every one," he says, " not excluding Thiers, to whom I was 
 presented, and had some chat. He seemed to be delighted 
 to hear of Guizot's good reception in England, and called 
 him ' un homme Eminent.' Thiers is the drollest little body 
 you ever saw, more like Dick Phillips the chemist, with his 
 spectacles, than any one I can recollect at this moment. I 
 heard him to-day in the Chambre des Deputes a short, 
 clear, and pithy speech, and I can understand how and why 
 he rules. 
 
 1 See ante, p. 279. 
 
288 SIR RODERICK MURCHISON. [mo. 
 
 " To-day I had De Verneuil with me from nine to one, 
 when we adjourned to M. de Meyendorf s, who starts to- 
 night for Petersburg, and with whom we arranged a Eussian 
 campaign for June, July, and August. It is agreed (if I do 
 not change my mind) that I sail for Petersburg the 25th May, 
 De Verneuil coming to meet me some days before. The 
 advantages are too great to be lost, both as respects the 
 Eussian factotum and administrator, and De Verneuil." 
 
 Among the hospitalities, he was especially pleased with 
 a soiree or banquet at which he was entertained by a 
 number of the leading geologists of Paris, a dinner from " old 
 Brongniart, in the most hospitable form, with lots of fossils 
 in ' sucreries,' " and a sumptuous entertainment in his honour 
 from M. ]lie de Beaumont. In return for these kindnesses 
 he gave a dinner at the " Eocher de Cancale," to a company 
 which included Arago, the two Brongniarts, ]lie de Beau- 
 mont, Noggerath of Bonn, D'Orbigny, Valenciennes, Eusseger 
 from Egypt, D'Archiac, Bou^ (then fresh from Turkey), and 
 De Verneuil. 
 
 The paper on the Boulonnais was well received at one 
 of the best meetings of the season of the Geological Society 
 of France. Alexander Brongniart was in the chair, and 
 an interesting discussion followed the paper, some of the 
 speakers impugning the right of the Old Eed Sandstone to 
 be regarded as a terrain, and Murchison standing up stoutly 
 in its defence. 
 
 After these few weeks in Paris, passed in this pleasant 
 way, he returned to London, having now but little time to 
 prepare for that Eussian campaign, the plan of which he 
 had sketched out. What this plan was, and how it was put 
 in execution, will be told in the succeeding Chapter. 
 
CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 A GEOLOGICAL TOUE IN NORTHERN RUSSIA. 
 
 AMID the ceaseless revolutions which, during the long 
 lapse of geological time, the surface of our planet has under- 
 gone, few tracts have escaped the effects of those movements 
 by which the rocky crust has been crumpled and broken. 
 The older the rocks the longer have they been exposed to 
 these movements, and the greater therefore are the fractures 
 and folds which have been made in their mass. Hence the 
 task of the geologist, though it may be often easy enough 
 among the unaltered deposits of recent times, frequently 
 becomes more and more difficult the higher the antiquity 
 of the rocks which he seeks to interpret. The older the 
 record, the more imperfect and illegible may we expect its 
 pages to be. 
 
 It was among some of the older chronicles of the geolo- 
 gical record that Sedgwick and Murchison had now been at 
 work for many years. With rare sagacity they had suc- 
 ceeded in eliciting the evidence of the order of succession 
 among some of the oldest and most shattered rocks of 
 Europe. They had developed that order in Britain, and as 
 
 VOL. I. T 
 
290 SIR RODERICK MURCHISON. [im 
 
 far as they were able had traced its continuance among simi- 
 lar rocks on the Continent. Many a time, however, had they 
 been thwarted and baffled by the obstacles presented by the 
 dislocations and contortions of the rocks, insomuch that, 
 although they felt sure that the general story as they had 
 interpreted it would be sustained by further investigation, 
 they could not as confidently defend all their details. 
 
 In the course of their work, accounts had reached them 
 of marvellous regions in the north-east of Europe, to which 
 the underground movements, so disastrous to the rocks of 
 the central and western tracts of the Continent, had never 
 reached a sort of geological elysium, where no volcanoes 
 had ever broken out, where no " convulsions of nature " 
 seemed ever to have disturbed the crust of the earth, from 
 very early geological times ; where the most ancient rocks, 
 elsewhere heaved up into hard crystalline mountains, lay 
 still in their original half consolidated state, as if the seas 
 in which they were laid down had only recently been 
 drained off. Moreover, they had heard that in these undis- 
 turbed rocks fossils were found shells, corals, fishes, very 
 like, if not the same as, those which they had disinterred 
 from Silurian, Devonian, or Carboniferous formations at 
 home. Murchison heard still more about these wonders 
 during the visit to Paris referred to in the previous Chapter. 
 Evidently some good work was to be done in that Eussian 
 territory. He might be able among such undisturbed rocks 
 to demonstrate by a new mass of evidence the order of 
 sequence already determined in Britain, and to show that 
 instead of being a mere local arrangement, that order was 
 really the normal one for Europe, if not for the whole globe. 
 
 With De Verneuil as his companion, the journey would 
 
1840.] MUROHI80N AND VON BUGH. 291 
 
 probably at least be an enjoyable one, and that naturalist's 
 great knowledge of fossils would be of inestimable service. 
 The plan was accordingly sketched out, and forthwith put 
 into execution. 
 
 The two fellow-travellers started in May from London, 
 and with no important halt journeyed straight to Berlin. It 
 was through the German geologists, and notably from Hum- 
 boldt and Von Buch, 1 that Murchison had learned what he 
 
 1 Murchison's obligations to Von Buch are well shown in the subjoined 
 characteristic letter, which further illustrates the estimation in which the 
 Silurian work of the English geologist was held by the highest geological 
 authority of Germany : 
 
 "BERLIN, 23 F6vrier 1840. 
 
 " n est certain, Monsieur, qu'il est facile d'etre savant, et m6me tres 
 savant, quand on tient une clef en main, comme votre superbe ouvrage. 
 .... Nous serons done Velches, et les noms de Llandeilo flags et de Cara- 
 doc nous deviendront tout-a-fait familiers, quoiqu'ils se ressentent un 
 peu de leur origine montagnarde. Je tache a les appliquer aux diverses 
 couches de rAllemagne, avant meme que vos savantes et laborieuses 
 recherches de 1'annee passee nous auront de'voile'es les secrets des mon- 
 tagnes germaniques ; et certes, il faudrait tre sans inte"ret si on ne croy- 
 ait voir quelque lumiere, votre ouvrage a la main. Mais, comme une 
 huitre d'unbanc d'Angleterre n'est pas unehuttre du Holstein ou d'ltalie, 
 quoique de la meme espece, de mime j'ai un peu d'appre"hension que 
 1'Allemagne quoique se plaant dans le me'me ordre que vous avez si 
 savamment etabli, pourrait facilement ajouter quelque nom barbare 
 a votre se"rie des couches, et au contraire voir s'ovanouir ou Wenlock 
 Shale, ou Llandeilo, ou quelqu'autre couche tres bien caracte'rise'e. 
 Chaque pays porte un caractere a soi, et de vouloir faire entrer des 
 couches qui sont caracte'rise'es par des productions qu'on ne retrouve pas 
 dans un autre systeme de montagnes, de vouloir les faire entrer dans une 
 case de la serie e"tablie me parait vouloir l'e"tendre dans un lit de Pro- 
 cruste .... 
 
 " Vos belles figures m'occupent sans cesse, et le vol. 2 de votre bible 
 ge'ologique ne sort presque pas de mes mains. Avec quelle satisfaction 
 ne doit on pas voir que vous avez vous m6me e"claire la partie difficile 
 des trilobites ! Plut au Ciel, que d'autres ggologues voullussent suivre un 
 si bel exemple, et ne pas abandonner la determination des especes aux 
 naturalistes de cabinet, qui ne peuvent pas e"tudier les diffe"rentes modifi- 
 cations des etres organiques, qu'on observe en place, et qui erigent en 
 espece chaque individu qu'on les prgsente 
 
 " J'avais cru, avant la publication de votre ouvrage, que ces couches du 
 Nord pourraient bien entrer dana le systeme Cambrien, je vois depuis 
 
292 
 
 SIR RODERICK MURCHI80N. 
 
 [1840. 
 
 knew of Eussian geology. Hence he made for the Prussian 
 capital, with the view of gathering together as full notes as 
 possible of all that was then known on the subject. Among 
 
 votre envoi que le caractere Silurien y est encore de"cidemment prononce, 
 par les Orthis et par les coraux, depuis le Ludlow j usqu'au Caradoc ; mais 
 Dieu me garde d'y vouloir reconnaltre un Caradoc limestone, un Caradoc 
 sandstone, un Caradoc shale. Le cortege de ces Princes doit changer 
 d'apres les localit^s, et le voisinage des Diorites, des Hyperites, des 
 Granits donne nn aspect bien different aux couches subordonne'es, que 
 n'ont les couches d'argile et de sable de St. Petersbourg. . . . 
 
 " Le superbe Holoptychius Nobilissimus et les planches qui suivent nous 
 donnent tout-a-coup 1'explication de tant d'e"cailles, qu'on a meme voulu 
 adapter a des Mammiferes, et elles nous prouvent qu'en Livonie le Sys- 
 teme DeVonien est tres deVeloppe" aux environs de Dorpat et de la vers 
 1'Est, jusqu'au centre des collines de Waldai prs de Novgorod. Ces 
 couches du Nord s'arrangent a peu pres ainsi. 
 
 Formation jurassiqw, moyenne. 
 Kelloway rock, Oxford clay, a Popilani 
 sur la Windau, 4 Test de Liban. lat. 56i. 
 
 C'est le point le plus bortal en Europe ou 
 on connaisse cette formation ; elle est re- 
 pandue sur toute la partie meridionale des 
 pays Baltiques, meme aux environs de Ber- 
 lin. Ammonites Jason, pollux, polygyratus, 
 Pecten flbrosus la caracterisent : Gryphea 
 dilatata. Les couches superieures man- 
 quent toujours. 
 
 I. Systeme Carbonifere. 
 Une grande partie des eollines Waldai 
 depuis Novgorod jusqu'a Wolotschosk et le 
 long du Wolkov. Le flanc de 1'Oural en 
 Asie autour de Bogoslavsk 59J. 
 
 Productus comoides, punctatus, antiqua- 
 tus, Mya sulcata, Melauia rugifera, Spirifer 
 trapezoidalis, etc. point d'Orthis. 
 
 II. Systeme Dtvonien. 
 Ores de Dorpat a ecailles d'Holoptychius 
 et Calcaire avec Terebratula Livonica, de- 
 crite et figurg par moi ; d'iinmenses masses 
 de Pavosites ou Choetetes capillaris. 
 
 Le lac Peipus en est entoure. Les grands 
 champignons de Choetetes se retrouvent 
 jusqu'a Moscou, pesants des quintaux 
 entiers. 
 
 III. Systeme Silurien. 
 Couches des collines de St. Petersbourg, 
 Selo, Paulowsk, Pulcowa, Esthonie, falaises 
 de EevaL 
 
 Deux Trilobites en abondance. Je ne les 
 trouve pas en Angleterre. Des Orthis en 
 foule, je les ai decrits, surtout Orthis 
 Panderi, Orthis Pronites on cenomala, 
 adscandens ; Orthis elegantula, qui est bien 
 votre canalis ; Orthis radiata, etc. . . . 
 
 " Continuez, je vous prie, de nous e'clairer et de nous instruire, et comp- 
 tez sur la reconnaissance de tons ceux qui prennent quelqu'inte'ret au 
 globe qu'ils habitent, et surtout sur celle de votre tres devout serviteur, 
 
 " LEOPOLD DE BUCH." 
 
1840.] EHRENBERG. 293 
 
 the friends who lent their assistance were Humboldt, Ehren- 
 berg, Gustav Eose, Von Dechen, and others. In writing to 
 Mrs. Murchison, he thus describes some of the interviews 
 in Berlin : 
 
 " The morning with Ehrenberg was arranged by Hum- 
 boldt, who accompanied us, and I never in my life enjoyed 
 two or three hours more intensely. To have the wonders 
 of the infusorial creation clearly explained by the dis- 
 coverer himself, and the whole illuminated by the flashes, 
 episodes, and general views of ' Der Humboldt,' was enough 
 to stir up every sympathy of a naturalist. We little know, 
 at least we do not know enough, in England of Ehrenberg's 
 immense knowledge. He is not merely a microscopic but a 
 great philosophic observer. Humboldt places him in a rank 
 above Cuvier, on account of the superior soundness and 
 accuracy of his discoveries. . . . Tell Sedgwick that I am 
 super- saturated with proofs of the correctness of our views, 
 and that I shall be certain to bring home much grist to our 
 common mill." 
 
 The following letter gives some further details, and starts 
 a project which, though proposed so long ago, has never been 
 put in practice an international congress of men of all 
 sciences, superseding for a year the usual meetings of such 
 national gatherings as our own British Association : 
 
 " BERLIN, 28lh May 1840. 
 
 " MY DEAR WHEWELL, Accept a few lines from your 
 wandering friend. We were too late to catch the Lubeck 
 steamer, so we consoled ourselves with Berlin, where we have 
 been for the last three days resting in intellectual and phy- 
 sical enjoyment with Humboldt, Von Buch, Von Dechen, 
 G-. Eose, Ehrenberg, etc. I have seen and learnt much, and 
 
294 SIR RODERICK MURCHISON. [im 
 
 have been so feted, as ' the Silurian monarch,' that it might 
 well turn the head of any one but an old soldier, who knows 
 very well how to receive a feu-de-joie. 
 
 " The immediate object of my writing to you is that I 
 have been your trumpeter, in my best fashion, I hope, with 
 an 'eloquence vraiment britannique,' in announcing your 
 forthcoming great work, particularly at a great ddjetiner 
 given to us this morning by Humboldt. I ventured to 
 mention of what great use your book would be to him before 
 he launched his ' Cosmos,' and I hope you will send him one 
 of your first copies, through his relative Baron Billow. He 
 expressed great regret at never having made your acquaint- 
 ance, which feeling I augmented by telling him you were 
 the English Humboldt. 
 
 " I have long had a project in my mind, which I now 
 intend to broach, and have indeed done so here. Seeing that 
 our various national associations prevent the men of all parts 
 of Europe from meeting each other, I propose that two 
 years hence,, that is, for 1842, each nation should abstain for 
 a year to have- its local meeting, and that we should all con- 
 gregate in a central town of Europe. Frankfort, the seat of 
 the Germanic Diet, easily accessible from England, France, 
 and Italy, appears to me the best spot, and that we should 
 honour the close of Humboldt's life by placing him in our 
 chair. No one is so generally beloved, and no one was ever 
 his enemy, and he would give us a fine broad philosophic 
 discourse. If I can [induce] you and one or two strong men 
 to get up the steam, I am sure it would be a really good 
 thing, and productive of much real advancement and enjoy- 
 ment. Write to me, Pension Anglaise, St. Petersburg, and 
 say what you think of it. I am certain that the British 
 
1840.] THE START IN RUSSIA. 295 
 
 Association would rejoice to have a year of reldche after 
 Manchester, or wherever we may go to next year, and by 
 having so much time to prepare we could make out an 
 excellent bill of fare." 
 
 With introductions to the authorities at St. Petersburg, 
 the travellers found their way smoothed for them. To con- 
 tinue our quotations : " The chief of the douaniers asked for 
 ' Murchison/ and we had the advantage of having our things 
 passed and sealed up with the Imperial arms, so that I might 
 have smuggled a mammoth." Similar good fortune, by the 
 friendly aid of the Eussian authorities, awaited them during 
 the whole of their tour in the dominions of the Czar. 
 
 After some preliminary sight-seeing, their plan of work 
 was arranged, and all preparations completed. Baron A. von 
 Meyendorf was about to start on a tour through the country 
 to inquire into the state of manufactures and trade in the 
 internal governments. With the view of adding to the 
 value of his report, he induced Murchison and De Verneuil 
 to accompany him, together with Count A. von Keyserling 
 and Professor Blasius. The Baron's objects, however, were 
 so different from those of his fellow-travellers, and his rate 
 of progress through the country so utterly incompatible with 
 adequate geological observation, that after a few weeks' trial 
 they had to part company with him. While he rushed for- 
 ward to complete his statistics, Murchison and De Vernueil, 
 accompanied by Koksharoff, a young Russian officer, who has 
 since done excellent service to Russian geology and mineralogy, 
 followed at a more leisurely but still by no means a slow pace. 
 For about two months they continued on the move. Passing 
 northwards by the great lakes, they reached Archangel, and 
 
296 SIR RODERICK MURCHISON. [mo. 
 
 made some explorations along the shores of the White Sea. 
 Ascending the Dwina, they penetrated into the heart of the 
 government of Vologda, and sweeping westwards by Nijnii 
 Novgorod, and the valley of the Volga, reached Moscow, 
 whence they returned by the Valdai Hills to St. Petersburg. 
 
 The mode of travelling differed very greatly from any 
 with which Murchison's previous geological rambles had 
 made him acquainted. Mounted on a light caleche, some- 
 times with five or six horses harnessed to it, he rushed 
 through the country, over sand, boulders, and bogs, at the 
 rate of often as much as ten or twelve miles an hour. " With 
 four ardent little steeds in hand, all abreast at the wheel, and 
 two before, conducted by a breechless boy who is threatened 
 with death if his horse backs or falls, your bearded Jehu 
 rattles down a slope at a headlong pace, and whirling you 
 over a broken wooden bridge with the noise of thunder, he 
 charges the opposite bank in singing " Go along, my little 
 beauties fly on, from mount to mount, from vale to vale, 
 'tis you that pull the silver gentleman (their delicate mode 
 of suggesting a good tip) ; 'tis you, my dears, shall have fine 
 pastures," the whole accompanied by grand gyrations of a 
 solid thong, which ever and anon falls like lead upon the 
 ribs of the wheelers, followed by screeches which would 
 stagger a band of Cherokees." * 
 
 It is true that for many a long league such rapid loco- 
 motion by no means interfered with geological observation, 
 the ground being so thickly covered with clay or sand that 
 none of the underlying rocks appeared at the surface. 
 These monotonous tracts deserved the description which 
 
 1 Quarterly Review, vol. Ixvii. (1841), p. 360, an article by Murchison 
 on the Russian provinces, with excerpts from his own reminiscences of 
 this first journey in that Empire. 
 
1840.] "ROUGHING IT" IN RUSSIA. 297 
 
 Sydney Smith had once given to him of Holland, "the 
 place of eternal punishment for geologists, all mud, and not 
 a stone to be found." 
 
 Over wide districts of territory there were no inns. The 
 travellers quartered themselves for the night on some priest 
 or peasant, sleeping generally on their own " shake-downs " 
 upon the floor. Nevertheless, they seem to have escaped 
 the " creeping and biting horrors " by which such a berth 
 is usually accompanied. The food being necessarily often 
 indifferent, at every available place they laid in a new stock 
 of provisions, among which roast- beef would appear to have 
 usually had a place. At one wretched village, for instance, 
 it is noted that " we dined on our portable soup, with an egg 
 or two, followed by the inside of our roast beef, the exterior 
 being by this time (therm. 80) in a greenish, mouldy state." 
 In the towns, however, thanks to the semi-official character 
 of their journey, better fare and more comfortable quarters 
 were secured to them. Thus at Archangel, the governor, 
 together with the English and French consuls, afforded 
 them much help. " Everything," says Murchison, " was 
 light and easy, except two great dinners of twenty-five per- 
 sons each, which we ate in company of Eussians, Germans, 
 Norwegians, French, and English, all these languages 
 going a good pace throughout the meals." 
 
 One of the pleasantest parts of the journey seems to have 
 been the luxury of tea-drinking, especially after days of 
 long, hot, and dusty travel. To sit in a " traktir " and sip 
 tea " of infinitely finer aroma than the Celestial Emperor will 
 ever permit to approach the depots of Canton," or in some 
 forlorn village to set his portable urn agoing, and " at once 
 command a cup of delicious tea," afforded our traveller a 
 
298 SIR RODERICK MURCHISON. [i84o. 
 
 pleasure of which the very remembrance continued to have 
 a pleasant aroma about it. We can well imagine, therefore, 
 with what appreciative interest, on getting at length to the 
 great traktir at Moscow, he must "have counted seventy 
 neat waiting-men ready to hand you a cup or a chibouk, 
 and 200 teapots arranged in one of the great vestibules of 
 those spacious saloons ! " ] 
 
 The journals and letters written during the tour give a 
 detailed enumeration of the stages, with copious notices of 
 the geology. The writer seems to have been too busy with 
 the rocks to have had much leisure to observe, or at least to 
 describe, what had not a distinct geological bearing. Now 
 and then, indeed, he does make a note of some social 
 custom or other non-scientific fact. Thus, at one of the 
 villages through which he travelled there had been an 
 epidemic among the horses, and the ceremony of blessing the 
 animals was going on as he passed. "A parish priest in 
 his robes was chanting in the centre of a group of horses, 
 whose heads were held around him by various men and 
 women. We stopped the carriage for an instant to see the 
 ceremony. After a short prayer (his books lying before him 
 upon a table) the priest dipped a sort of brush into a bowl 
 of water which he had consecrated, and turning to each 
 horse dashed some water in its face, and afterwards on its 
 flanks. The running back and movement of the horses, the 
 solemn faces of the peasants, and of their wives and 
 daughters, who stood aloft on the high steps and balconies of 
 the cottages, produced a very pleasing subject for the artist, 
 and I regretted for the hundredth time that I had not a 
 
 1 Quart. Review, loc. cit. p. 365. 
 
1840.] RUSSIAN TRAVEL. 299 
 
 travelling friend who could sketch the scenes of life in this 
 original country." 
 
 For the Eussian peasantry he conceived a high admira- ' 
 tion, which subsequent travelling in the country only con- 
 firmed. Their patience, good-nature, courtesy, readiness of 
 resource, and cheerfulness, called forth his frequent praises ; 
 nor less was he satisfied with the intelligence and civility of 
 the officials with whom he came in contact. He entered 
 the empire willing to be pleased, and he left it with an 
 almost enthusiastic appreciation which lasted to the end of 
 his life. 
 
 Long leagues of jolting over rough roads and byways 
 tried at once the patience of the travellers and the timber 
 of their carriage. Here is an account of their triumphant 
 entry again into the capital : " Our near fore- wheel, which 
 had been for some time very rickety, fell to pieces as we 
 approached Ijora, so this gave the blacksmith a three 
 hours' job, whilst we were in a horrid hostelry. Travelling 
 on at night, we broke down again within a hundred yards 
 of the post at the gate of Petersburg, and were obliged to 
 sleep here. The wheel renovated, we started, and it again 
 became dismembered five hundred yards from the starting- 
 place. I write this among the Vulcans, doubting if we reach 
 the capital to-day. ... At length we reached Mrs. Wilson's, 
 on our tottering wheels, on Tuesday the 25th August at 
 8 A.M." 
 
 Murchison was fond of rapid geological work. With his 
 faculty of quickly seizing the salient features of the geologi- 
 cal structure of a country, he liked well to move swiftly 
 from point to point, eye and note-book busy all the while 
 noting and recording each point as he went along. During 
 
300 SIR RODERICK MURCHISON. [i84o. 
 
 this first Eussian tour there was ample scope for the grati- 
 fication of this taste. The general structure of the regions 
 visited was simple enough, so that a few traverses and the 
 examination of sections at comparatively few points, gave 
 the order and arrangement of the rocks over vast areas of 
 territory. The difficulties of the task are thus summarized 
 by him : 
 
 " Three causes impede geological researches in Northern 
 Eussia : 1st, The flatness and unbroken surface of the coun- 
 try ; 2d, The thick cover of drift and alluvium ; and, 3dly, 
 More than anything, the suspicion of the peasants, who never 
 would give information, inasmuch as they believe that you 
 are in search of something by which they may be taxed or 
 oppressed by some order of the Government, or its employes." 
 
 And yet, notwithstanding these scruples, a vast deal of 
 cross- questioning of the natives went on all through the 
 journey, sometimes not without good effect; for, in their 
 necessarily rapid traverse of the country, the travellers, 
 having no guide-book literature to help them, trusted to the 
 natives for information as to sections worthy of visit on 
 their route. At listing they met the man who had made 
 the now well-known deep sinkings in the frozen soil of 
 Yakutsk, in Siberia. Murchison notes, that after a long in- 
 terrogatory, he learnt that, with the exception of about 60 
 feet of alluvium, the shaft to the depth of 350 feet was sunk 
 in hard grey limestone, with partings of shale and coal 
 
 By taking advantage of all available information, and 
 making good use of their eyes along the line of journey, 
 the travellers succeeded, in spite of the flatness, and the 
 interminable sand, clay, and boulders, in establishing the 
 order of the palseozoic formations over a great part of 
 
1840.] GEOLOGICAL SUCCESSES IN RUSSIA. 301 
 
 Northern Eussia. From a lower mass of ancient crystal- 
 line rocks they had made out a most complete and interest- 
 ing ascending series of Silurian, Old Red Sandstone, and 
 Carboniferous deposits, not hardened, broken, and crumpled 
 like the corresponding rocks in Britain, but flat, and only 
 partially consolidated. So young indeed did these truly 
 ancient deposits appear, that it was difficult to realize that 
 soft blue clays and loose friable limestones were the geolo- 
 gical equivalents of hard fractured slates and marbles in 
 Western Europe. Only by recognising in them the charac- 
 
 Pterichthys, a Fossil Fish of the Old Red Sandstone of Scotland and Russia. 
 
 teristic fossils of the typical districts could their true geolo- 
 gical horizon be ascertained. 
 
 By much the most important observation which they 
 made was the discovery of the Old Red Sandstone fishes in 
 the same beds with true Devonian shells a discovery the 
 full import of which will be perceived if we remember the 
 long and arduous struggle which Sedgwick and Murchison 
 had had to show that the Devonshire Jcillas answered in 
 point of geological time to the Old Red Sandstone and Con - 
 glomerate of other districts. " If I had seen nothing more 
 than this," Murchison writes, " it would have been a great 
 triumph for myself and Sedgwick. When we contended that 
 the limestones and sandstones of Devonshire were of the 
 same age as the Old Red Sandstone of Scotland, we were met 
 
302 SIR RODERICK MURCHISON. [mo. 
 
 with this objection, ' Show us a fish of the Old Red in Devon, 
 or a Devonshire shell in the Old Eed of Scotland/ Here, 
 then, in Eussia I have solved the problem, for these shells 
 and these fishes (species for species) are here unquestion- 
 ably united in the very same flagstones." 
 
 A rapid journey homeward brought our traveller back in 
 time for the meeting of the British Association, which was 
 held in September in Glasgow. The results of the tour in 
 relation to the Devonian question had been so unexpectedly 
 remarkable that he was no doubt anxious to get back to the 
 Association Meeting, where he would have the opportunity 
 of announcing his important discovery. While on board the 
 steamer dropping down the Baltic, he wrote full of glee to 
 Sedgwick, giving an outline of the journey, and of some of 
 the more important geological details. " Our success," he re- 
 marked, "has been so great that I am of course in very good 
 humour, which I take the earliest opportunity of communi- 
 cating to you, hoping that the ' trinitarian ' proof 1 which the 
 examination of this vast region has afforded me of the truth 
 of Devonianism will set you up for the winter, drive away 
 all acid and gout, and make you ' Adamus redivivus.' 
 
 " Well or ill, I am sure, however, you will rejoice in the 
 splendid and unanswerable confirmation of our views. . . . 
 Think of my audacity ! Here I am without a speech to open 
 the grand congress [at Glasgow], but what I have been 
 scribbling in the steamer. If this finds you in good health, 
 send me a bit of a sky-rocket of a finale, with allusions to 
 Arran, and their coal-fields and their mineral wealth, and 
 their Watt, and their forty-horse-powers, and you will much 
 
 1 He refers to the union in the same strata of the mineral characters 
 and fossils of the Old Red Sandstone with the fossils of the Devonian 
 
 rocks. 
 
1840.] BRITISH ASSOCIATION AT GLASGOW. 303 
 
 oblige your friend, who, however he may see all these things 
 floating before him, has not the same power as you of put- 
 ting them into attractive form. 
 
 " I am now more on the move than ever, and having 
 got the cacoethes, I am planning the Ural on one hand, and 
 the Alleghanies on the other, for nothing short of Conti- 
 nental masses will now suit my palate." 
 
 Of the memorably successful meeting of the British 
 Association in Glasgow in 1840 some notes may be gleaned 
 from his letters written under the enthusiasm of the time. 
 Thus, to Dr. Whewell he says " We never had such good 
 work as in our geological section ; and I am told by Sabine 
 that Section A was admirably conducted by Forbes. The 
 opportune arrival of Enke, Agassiz, and Airey gave a great 
 brilliancy to our last days. From the Duke of Hamilton, 
 whose palace has been open daily with dinners of fifty per- 
 sons, down to my hearty friend Thomas Edington, there is 
 but one feeling of satisfaction. It is, I give you my word, the 
 only meeting which I have attended where nothing has been 
 done which I could wish altered, save the statistical display ; 
 all the rest has been done kindly, cordially, and well, which 
 I very much attribute to the excellent Lord Provost and the 
 Locals, who have brought together all classes. 
 
 " Colquhoun's after-dinner speech a complete smasher 
 for the Times ; the good, manly, unaffected bearing of our 
 chief [Marquis of Breadalbane] ; the very good sense shown 
 by Lord Greenock ; the unbounded joy of my Eussian friends, 
 who kissed me on both cheeks, all these circumstances, not 
 omitting the glorious day at Arran, when I lectured to a good 
 band of workmen, with every peak of Goatfell illumined, and 
 marched up at the close of the day to Brodick Castle with 
 
304 SIR RODERICK MURCHISON. [i840. 
 
 the heir of the House of Douglas, preceded by the piper 
 all these things, I say, have well repaid me for my journey 
 from Nijnii Novgorod, and have more than confirmed the 
 anticipations I entertained of the success of the Glasgow 
 meeting." To that success Murchison himself contributed 
 much. Still holding the office of General Secretary, he had 
 to superintend a vast mass of details which, though separ- 
 ately insignificant enough, combined to determine the 
 success or failure of such a meeting. The kindly, genial 
 President, was not a man of science. Instead of attempting 
 to prepare a scientific address, he very properly left to the 
 General Secretaries the task of drawing up a brief sketch of 
 the progress of science. " It is my fate," wrote Murchison 
 to Whewell, just before the meeting, " to have, in conjunction 
 with Sabine, to prepare a note of the King's speech, to be 
 read at Glasgow." l 
 
 To this meeting a general interest attaches in the history 
 of British Geology, inasmuch as it brought into notice and 
 into personal acquaintance with the geologists of the day 
 two men who have since made their mark in the literature 
 of British Geology Hugh Miller and Andrew Crombie 
 Ramsay. 
 
 The name of the stone-mason of Cromarty had for some 
 years been known to geologists who took interest in the 
 older rocks as that of a diligent and successful collector of 
 the fossils of the Old Eed Sandstone of the north of Scotland. 2 
 He had recently come to Edinburgh as editor of a news- 
 paper. In the columns of that journal he had begun to 
 publish sketches of the structure of the strange fishes which 
 
 1 The project of an international congress of science is publicly proposed 
 in this address. See Rep. Brit. Assoc., vol. for 1840, p. xlvii. 
 
 2 See ante, p. 25.7. 
 
1840.] HUGH MILLER AND A. C. RAMSAY. 305 
 
 he had disinterred, and graphic pictures of the scenery and 
 geology of the Cromarty coast-line. These contributions 
 had already attracted the notice of some of the leading 
 geologists of the day. Hence a kindly and appreciative 
 welcome greeted Miller's personal entrance into the ranks. 
 The cordiality of his reception was shown by none more than 
 by Murchison, who, indeed, had been largely instrumental in 
 bringing him forward, and to whom he next year gracefully 
 acknowledged his gratitude by dedicating to the author of 
 the " Silurian System " the volume into which the news- 
 paper articles grew the charming and classic " Old Red 
 Sandstone." 
 
 Mr. Eamsay was then a young man, who, betaking him- 
 self to Arran, had scoured its glens, hill-sides, and shores, and 
 made a large geological map and model of the island. These 
 he exhibited at the British Association meeting, accompany- 
 ing them with an explanatory paper. His work showed him 
 to possess in so eminent a degree the qualities out of which 
 a good field-geologist is made, that Murchison was greatly 
 impressed with his capacity, and proposed to take him abroad 
 with him in the following year. Though that determination 
 was not carried out, it led directly, as we shall see, to Mr. 
 Eamsay's joining the Geological Survey, and thus opened 
 up for him the path by which he has risen to distinction. 
 
 Sedgwick did not appear at this meeting ; indeed, he had 
 become so remiss in his attendance at the gatherings of the 
 Association as to suggest that he meant to retire from it 
 altogether. His presence was missed during some of the 
 discussions in the Geological Section, for an observant eye 
 might now have perceived the first speck forming of that 
 dark cloud which, slowly gathering year after year, finally 
 VOL. i. u 
 
306 SIR RODERICK MURCHISON. [mo. 
 
 blighted all his close friendship with Murchison, and led 
 him to retire from the society which he had brightened for 
 so many years. Immediately after the meeting Murchisou 
 sent him a letter containing some account of what had 
 been done. That letter has a special interest in connexion 
 with future events. It serves too to show the active part 
 its writer took in the management of the Association, as 
 well as his characteristic regard for high social position : 
 
 " WISHAW HOUSE, Sept. 26, 1840. 
 
 " MY DEAE S., Our Glasgow meeting has been alto- 
 gether the most successful that could have been desired. . . . 
 
 " I was compelled to take a strong measure, but one of 
 which I know you will heartily approve, in putting Whe- 
 well in nomination as our next President, for the Plymouth 
 meeting. I say a strong measure, because on my broaching 
 it to him he wrote me a letter of four sides (just before he 
 left us, and in the middle of the meeting) to show that he 
 was in every respect disqualified. Such, however, was not 
 the opinion of a single person here whom I consulted, and 
 I therefore went on, and he was elected by acclamation, 
 nem. diss. It appeared that the Manchester folks rather 
 wished to have us in 1842 than in 1841, so we were sud- 
 denly thrown upon Devon. To carry out the principles of 
 alternation alluded to in my opening address (which I send 
 you), it was essential to have a man of science at our head. 
 So the staff of science for that meeting are, Whewell, Pres. ; 
 Snow Harris, Hamilton Smith, and Were Fox, Secretaries; 
 and four men of local weight and family to balance them 
 as V.-P.s Sir C. Lemon, Sir T. Acland, Lord Morley, and 
 Lord Eliot. 
 
 " Agassiz's arrival was very opportune, for he confirmed 
 
1840.] BRITISH ASSOCIATION AT GLASGOW. 307 
 
 the identification of the Eussian and Scottish fishes. I 
 also resolved to pull out Hugh Miller of Cromarty, and 
 other Scotsmen of the north, and on the last day I gave an 
 expose of all that you and myself did in the beginning of 
 this foray, and held up our sections and our Dipteri, Agassiz 
 followed, and ended by naming the curious new winged 
 creature Pterichthys Milleri. 
 
 "Agassiz gave us a great field-day on Glaciers, and I 
 think we shall end in having a compromise between him- 
 self and us of the floating icebergs! I spoke against the 
 general application of his theory. 
 
 " Mr. Bowman's memoir contained some good details. 1 
 .... I explained that the outline between Cambrian and 
 Silurian in that region [North Wales], as inserted by your- 
 self in my map, was done without Ordnance maps, and 
 merely to serve as an approximation ; that both you and 
 myself were aware of the age of the beds in the Yale of 
 Llangollen, and that some day or other you would roll out 
 what had been for many years in your head and wallet. 
 De la Beche and Phillips pressed me about the natural line 
 of separation between S. and C., on which I replied as 
 in my book, that in many parts a fixed line of demarcation 
 was impossible, but that I was convinced that to whatever 
 extent the same species of fossils as in the Lower Silurian 
 strata descended into your upper group, you could show 
 
 1 The paper referred to here was one in which its author gave the 
 result of some traverses which he had made across the supposed boundary- 
 line between the Cambrian and Silurian tracts of North Wales. He 
 could find no fossils in the so-called Cambrian rocks differing from those 
 of the Lower Silurian series, and stated that " if there be any boundary 
 between the Upper Cambrian and Lower Silurian systems, it must be 
 defined by other evidence than that of fossils." Brit, Assoc. Reports, 
 1840, Sections, p. 102. 
 
308 SIR RODERICK MURGHISON. [ISM. 
 
 the existence indeed, that you had already done so both 
 in Wales and Cumberland of vast masses of much higher 
 antiquity which must have a distinguishing name." 
 
 After all the scientific and social work of the Association 
 Meeting at Glasgow had been successfully completed there 
 began another series of hospitalities. Not a few of the landed 
 proprietors, specially those who had taken part in the gather- 
 ing, invited the more prominent members of the Association 
 to visit them. In this way Murchison and his wife found 
 themselves once more in the heart of the Highlands, enjoying 
 the scenery and good cheer of that region. From Lord Brea- 
 dalbane the General Secretary had some deer-stalking at the 
 old homely shieling of the Black Mount ; but part of the 
 journey was planned to include a visit to the north of Scot- 
 land, with Agassiz, to look after the Old Red Sandstone and 
 its fishes. By the 29th of October he had reached Alnwick 
 Castle on his homeward journey, whence he writes to Sir 
 Philip Egerton : " I believe if I consulted my own happiness 
 I should do nothing but visit till Christmas, but this must 
 not be. Work must be revised, and I have an overwhelming 
 mass to reduce to order, which if not done before ' the big 
 wen ' begins to fill will never be done. So I have resolved 
 even to give my old friends of the North Eiding the go-by, 
 and to stick to the east coast, finishing with Cambridge, and 
 reaching Somerset House in time for our second meeting in 
 November. If you have not been frost-bitten by Buckland 
 you have at all events had plenty of friction, scratching, and 
 polishing, before now, and next year you may give us a paper 
 on the glaciers of Wyvis and the ' moraines' on which you 
 sport ! I intend to make fight." 
 
Equipped as a '-' Glacialist," ./'<'""< " sketcn by Tim*. Sopwith, />/. 
 
1840.] GLACIATION OF BRITAIN. 309 
 
 The " frost-biting " referred to the remarkable series 
 of observations by Agassiz among ^he glaciers of the 
 Alps, and the extension of them to Scotland by Buck- 
 land, Lyell, and Agassiz himself. Many years earlier Sir 
 James Hall had directed attention to the ; ay in which the 
 rocks on the surface of the country had been smoothed, 
 polished, and striated, by some great natural agent. He made 
 a careful examination of these " dressed rocks," attributing 
 them to the effects of some powerful debacles or earthquake- 
 waves, sweeping over the land and hurrying along sand, 
 gravel, and huge loose blocks and boulders. A study of 
 the phenomena of the Swiss valleys, however, had taught 
 Charpentier, and afterwards Agassiz, that the smoothing and 
 scratching of the rocks could have been the work of but one 
 agent glacier-ice. 1 Profiting by Swiss experience, Buck- 
 land had already begun to identify some of Hall's " dressed 
 rocks" and other superficial phenomena, as strictly parallel 
 with those among the Alpine valleys and plains. And now, 
 in the autumn of this year, the great Swiss naturalist, who 
 had come to Scotland chiefly to study Old Eed Sandstone 
 fishes, found everywhere, to his amazement, the counterparts 
 of the ice- worn rocks and glacier debris which he had been 
 so intently looking at among his own great mountains. He 
 not merely corroborated Dr. Buckland's identifications, but 
 went so far as to proclaim that Scotland, the north of Eng- 
 land, and indeed a great part of the northern hemisphere, 
 had once been actually buried under vast sheets of ice. 
 
 So bold and startling a doctrine involved an intimate 
 
 1 It is common to attribute the first observation of this geological 
 agency of glaciers to Agassiz. It was recorded by Charpentier, however, 
 apparently as a known fact, five years before Agassiz's observations 
 appeared. Annales des Mines, 1835, viii. 
 
310 SIR RODERICK MURCHISON. [mo. 
 
 acquaintance with the everyday life and motions of a glacier, 
 which at that time British geologists did not possess. Con- 
 sequently the views of Agassiz met with little favour. The 
 opposition which Murchison promised them was joined in 
 vigorously by other scientific leaders. Hence fully twenty 
 years had to pass, and a new generation of labourers had to 
 appear upon the scene, before the essential truth of Agassiz*s 
 teaching was generally recognised. 1 
 
 But pleasant and useful though this Scotch tour proved 
 to the busy General Secretary, it formed only a kind of 
 interlude in the serious task of interpreting the geological 
 structure of the older rocks of Eussia. As he said himself, 
 he had returned from the shores of the White Sea to take his 
 place in the Association at Glasgow. Hence, when once 
 more back amongst his note-books and maps in London, he 
 returned heart and soul to Eussian geology. While the 
 incidents of travel remained still fresh in his recollection 
 he wrote the article (already referred to) for the March 
 number of the Quarterly Review, on " Tours in the Eussian 
 Provinces." While reviewing the works of recent travellers 
 in that part of Europe he reveals, in a characteristic way, 
 his own identity. For there must have been few readers of 
 the gossipy article who did not perceive that its author had 
 been with Moore in Spain and Portugal, that he had sub- 
 sequently dabbled in art at Eome, that he retained a senti- 
 mental affection for the old Highland Jacobites and the doings 
 of those who were "out in the '15," that he was addicted 
 to geological pursuits, that he had spent the preceding sum- 
 mer doing geological work in the north of Eussia, and that, 
 
 1 See a memoir on the Glacial Drift of Scotland, Trans. Oeol. Soc. 
 Glasgow, vol. i. Part 2. 
 
1840-41.] PLAN OF TOUR TO THE URALS. 311 
 
 in short, he could be no other than Roderick Impey Murchi- 
 son, though under a somewhat different guise from that in 
 which he was ordinarily known. 
 
 The more serious work of this winter appears to have 
 consisted partly in the preparation of the memoir on the 
 continental Devonian rocks with Sedgwick (and, of course, 
 with the repetition of delay at Cambridge and urgent 
 entreaty from London), but mainly in drawing up an 
 account of the Eussian journey for the Geological Society. 
 This latter task helped to indicate more clearly the points 
 of defective knowledge which were to be cleared up by the 
 next tour. 
 
 That tour had been partly planned before he and his 
 companion, De Verneuil, had left Eussia. It was heartily 
 entered into by the Eussian authorities, from whom, indeed, 
 Murchison received a flattering request to continue his 
 labours, with the promise of ample assistance. He deter- 
 mined to avail himself of these offers, and strike across the 
 Eussian Empire, into the heart of the Ural Mountains. So 
 long and arduous a survey was evidently one which could 
 not be accomplished in a short summer holiday. It would 
 require longer time and more endurance than that of the 
 previous year. 
 
 Two Societies claimed and certainly received Murchison's 
 firmest allegiance the Geological Society, and the British 
 Association. His proposed absence from this country, how- 
 ever, altered considerably his relations to both, and he 
 accordingly made up his mind to resign the post of General 
 Secretary to the British Association. In intimating this 
 design to the President, Dr. Whewell, he could justify his 
 absence this year by the importance of the work he had 
 
312 SIR RODERICK MURCHISON. [i84i. 
 
 undertaken abroad, as well as by the fact that he had not 
 hitherto failed to take his share of work at every meeting 
 of the Association since its foundation, and he concluded his 
 letter with the assurance, that when the 29th of July came 
 round, he would not forget the gathering to be held then at 
 Plymouth under Whe well's leadership, but would " drink to 
 their healths if any liquor can be had in the Ural Moun- 
 tains." 
 
 Things had turned out otherwise at the Geological 
 Society, for there, at their anniversary in February, and with 
 the knowledge that he would be absent from England dur- 
 ing the greater part of the year, his associates once more 
 placed Murchison in the President's chair, and sent him on 
 his self-imposed travel with all the prestige which such a 
 post of honour carries with it. 
 
 As already mentioned, he had formed a wish to help the 
 young geologist who had shown so much geological skill by 
 his model and description of Arran, and that wish had to 
 some extent taken practical shape in a plan to carry Mr. 
 Ramsay abroad with him. The latter, accordingly, came to 
 London about the middle of March ; but at the last moment 
 the proposed plan of conjoint travel was changed. This 
 change, at first so bitterly disappointing to his young friend 
 and future colleague, but in the end so fraught with benefit 
 to both, was thus announced by Murchison at the time : 
 " Having decided upon going to Eussia, and not to America 
 (and I shall be off in ten days), I have unwillingly given up 
 the idea of taking you with me ; but, in doing so, I have 
 secured for you a much more lucrative place than any which 
 I could have offered you about myself. Mr. De la Beche 
 has kindly promised to place you on his list of assistants of 
 
1841.] GEOLOGICAL CLUB DINNERS. 313 
 
 the Ordnance Geological Survey. As the work in question 
 is one for which you are particularly fitted, I hope you will 
 approve of my endeavours to serve you." 
 
 Mr. Eamsay has kindly furnished the following reminis- 
 cences of these "early days of his intercourse with his future 
 chief : " I think I must have dined five or six times with 
 Mr. M. during my thirteen days' stay in London ; once at the 
 Geological Club, at the Crown and Anchor by Temple Bar, 
 where I first met some of the great geologists whom I had 
 not previously seen in Glasgow at the B. A. meeting. Mr. 
 M. introduced me specially to old John Taylor, a famous 
 man in the mining world, and much respected and beloved 
 by all the geologists, and indeed by every one. He was 
 treasurer to the Club. I sat between him and Major Clerke 
 an old warrior, with a cork leg, a man of perfectly polished 
 manner, witty, and with a vast fund of anecdotes, some 
 of which were of the complexion called blue. At that Club 
 meeting, I recollect Sedgwick and Buckland, Phillips, 
 Greenough, Fitton, Lyell, Sopwith, and Owen, and there 
 were others that I forget. Forbes was then a young man 
 just on the eve of starting to join Graves in the ^Egean. 
 The dinner made a great impression on me. Mr. M., as 
 President of the Society, was in the chair, but I do not 
 recollect anything that took place except the mirth created 
 at our end of the table by Major Clerke and old John 
 Taylor's deep voice and pleasant laugh." A few days after 
 that dinner the President was on his way to Eussia, while 
 his friend joined the Geological Survey at Tenby, there 
 to begin a long and distinguished connexion with that 
 branch of the public service, of which he is now the honoured 
 and esteemed chief 4 
 
314 SIR RODERICK MURCHISON. [wi. 
 
 Two days before starting Murchison sent a parting note 
 to Sedgwick, in which he wrote : " To cleanse an Augean 
 stable filled with Rhenish, German, and Eussian fossils, and 
 to leave the home of the British Association clean swept 
 and all in order, has been no light work for the last fort- 
 night. To make the map for our memoir gave me no small 
 trouble, but now all is done, and the whole concern is 
 ready to go to press, if the Council does not turn crotchety 
 and puzzle-headed. If they do, we must publish elsewhere 
 without loss of time, for the data are good. ... I am off 
 
 the day after to-morrow God bless you. Go to 
 
 Plymouth and fight my battles. It is now your turn." 
 
CHAPTEE XV. 
 
 CENTRAL AND SOUTHERN RUSSIA AND THE URAL MOUNTAINS. 
 
 IT was with a more ambitious programme, and with the 
 advantage of the previous year's experience of the country, 
 that Murchison once more, in the spring of 1841, bent his 
 steps to the Neva. De Verneuil again accompanied him, 
 and shared in the honours and the toils of a still more 
 eventful and successful campaign than any which they had 
 yet undertaken together. The two friends had grown dear 
 to each other. But apart from the ties of mutual esteem, 
 they presented a singularly happy conjunction of qua- 
 lities for their special scientific work. Murchison's quick 
 eye in detecting the leading elements of geological structure 
 would have been of comparatively minor value without 
 De Verneuil's wide knowledge of the early forms of life, 
 on the determination of which the comparison of the rocks 
 yet unvisited with others already well known was mainly 
 to be based. In their Eussian colleague von Keyserling 
 they found an admirable travelling companion, and one to 
 whose judgment and powers of observation the success of their 
 conjoint work in the empire of the Czar was largely indebted. 
 
316 SIR RODERICK MURCHISON. [mi. 
 
 The route chosen, as before, lay by Paris and Berlin. 
 During a short halt at Paris Murchison had an opportunity 
 of gathering the opinions of the geologists there as to the 
 work which Sedgwick and he had been doing in Devonshire 
 and Ehineland. He lost no time in letting his friend 
 know the result. " Every one here," he writes, " is most 
 anxious for the appearance of our memoir, as well as 
 Dumont and the Belgians. . . . Whatever dubiety may 
 shroud the minds of some of our countrymen, the thing 
 is already quite done as to the Continent. All the palae- 
 ontologists are with us, and I am happy to tell you I saw 
 yesterday in Elie de Beaumont's closet the copperplates 
 of the table of colours of the great map of France, in 
 which Devonian, Silurian, and Cambrian are all regularly 
 engraved. 
 
 " As you are going to Plymouth this year, I beg you 
 will look about you both inside and outside of the Sec- 
 tion C It may be the object of and 
 
 to mystify our divisions. But stand to your guns. The 
 types are clear and distinct, and beds of passage are not 
 to frighten us. ... It would gratify me much if you could 
 devote an hour to me immediately after the Plymouth meet- 
 ing, and tell me how all went off. .... The geological 
 sight here is the Artesian fountain at Grenelle, which I 
 visited yesterday. It is a noble rush of smoking water 
 quite a comfortable tepid bath. Portez-vous bien, my dear 
 friend. Think of me when I am in Siberia, as I shall think 
 of you holding forth on the Breakwater ; and wishing you a 
 happy meeting, and an absence of all gout, believe me," etc, 
 
 There would seem to have been only one incident of note 
 in the early part of the journey : Murchison and De Verneuil 
 
1841.] ST. PETERSBURG. 317 
 
 were all but arrested, in entering the Prussian territories, on 
 the charge of issuing false notes, which they had unwittingly 
 obtained at Paris. They were helped out of the difficulty by 
 Humboldt. Such portions of their short stay at Berlin as 
 could be spared from the hospitalities abundantly offered to 
 them by their German scientific brethren, were devoted to 
 the acquisition of additional information as to what was 
 known of Eussian geology. They arrived at St. Petersburg 
 on the 30th of April. 
 
 The Eussian capital was at that time full of bustle and 
 excitement, on the occasion of the marriage of the eldest 
 son and heir of the Emperor Nicholas. A magnificent series 
 of fetes had been organized to celebrate the event. Our 
 geologists had determined to see these sights before begin- 
 ning their work. Besides, Murchison looked forward to 
 obtaining considerable official assistance for his survey. He 
 judged it a good stroke of policy to make the acquaintance of 
 as many of the leading ministers and heads of departments 
 as possible. At the British Embassy he met many old 
 acquaintances, and made not a few new ones, obtaining like- 
 wise the much-coveted invitation to the Imperial Palace. 
 How these days of festival were spent is best told in his 
 letters to his wife : 
 
 " The last few days have given us pleasant dinners, at 
 Lord Clanricarde's, at the French Ambassador's, at General 
 Tcheffkine's, where we settled our line of march, at the Minis- 
 ter of Finance's, Count Cancrine, and, yesterday, at Prince 
 Butera's. The last was the most sumptuous of all these 
 feeds, many Circassian lacqueys, and mushrooms in every 
 dish. From General Kisseleff, the Minister of the Imperial 
 Domains, I had a history of the successive denudations of the 
 
318 SIR RODERICK MURCHISOP. [mi. 
 
 wood of each region of Russia, and how each denudation had 
 proceeded from south to north. Herodotus describes the 
 regions bordering on Turkey, now grassy steppes, as dense 
 forests. This being for centuries the great line of march 
 of Tartars and Easterns towards Europe, was cleared first ; 
 secondly, a middle region, half wood, half arable, as at Mos- 
 cow, etc. ; thirdly, the present forest region, all in the north." 
 
 " The event which charmed me was the great Court ball 
 of Wednesday, on the occasion of the marriage, to which we 
 were invited by his Majesty's order. The entrances to the 
 wonderful Winter Palace are so numerous that you are not 
 surprised when you perceive how a thousand star-and-gartered 
 eminences and well-dressed women have all within an hour 
 found their way into the ' Salle Blanche/ The whole of this 
 exquisite Palace being re-built and re-gilt, it is now in full 
 beauty, and the blaze of light, the elegance of the candelabras, 
 and the masses of gold, quite rivet attention. We have no 
 notion of lighting, and I now understand the criticism of the 
 foreigners who attended our Coronation. 
 
 "We waited for our presentation, which took place in about 
 half an hour, when the Emperor came up to Lord Clanricarde, 
 and asked for me, saying to me, ' You have travelled a great 
 deal in our country, and intend to do so again.' On my 
 thanking his Majesty for the kindness of my reception, he 
 cut me short by saying, ' C'est a vous que nous devons nos 
 remerciments profonds de venir parmi nous pour nous ^claircir 
 et de nous etre si utile. Je vous prie d'accepter mori per- 
 sonnel,' etc. He then asked if that was not my companion 
 near me, and De Verneuil had his talk ; but my excellent 
 friend being short-sighted, had mistaken the Emperor, so that 
 when his Majesty left us, De V. turned to me coolly and 
 
1841.] THE EMPEROR NICHOLAS I. 319 
 
 said, ' Eh bien ! c'est un homme tres agre'able que ce Grand 
 Due.' ' Mais c'est 1'Empereur, mon cher ! ' 
 
 " It was however in the advanced part of the evening that 
 I really became intimate with the Czar. I had glided through 
 all the apartments, and was seated in converse with Count 
 Strogonoff, when the Emperor appeared, and we were all on 
 foot. He selected me, and leaning against a pilaster began 
 a regular conversation, asking me my opinion on various parts 
 of the country. After I had told him where I had been, he 
 said, ' Great traveller as I am, you have already seen large 
 tracts of my country which I have never visited.' He then 
 got me to open out upon my own hobby, and put me quite at 
 home ; I ventured on my first endeavour at explanation, by 
 stating how dearly I was interested in the structure of a 
 country the whole northern region of which was made up of 
 strata which I had spent so many years in classifying and 
 arranging in other parts of Europe ; how their vast scale in 
 Russia had surprised me, and how they offered evidences which 
 were wanting in the western countries. We then talked of 
 coal, and I ventured on a geological lecture in order to ex- 
 plain where coal would not be found, the uses of our science, 
 etc. I ushered it in by saying that I was certain that his 
 Majesty liked to know the truth, and my honest opinion, and 
 he instantly said, 'Surtout, parlez franchement/ Having 
 given him the Silurian reasons against any coal deposits 
 worthy of the name in any of the very ancient rocks on which 
 his metropolis was situated, and a general view of the ABC, 
 to all of which he listened most attentively, I then comforted 
 him about the great coal-field of the Donetz, in Southern 
 Russia, to which I was destined to go. ' Coal,' I said, 'was to be 
 looked for in the south, and not in the north, which seemed 
 
320 SIR RODERICK MURCHISON. [mi. 
 
 a providential arrangement, as the forests were still plentiful 
 in the latter, but annihilated in the former tracts. ' Ah ! ' said 
 he, ' but how we have wasted our forests ! What disorder and 
 irregularity has existed ! It is high time to put a stop to 
 such practices, or God knows what would have been the state 
 of the Empire, even under the reign of my son ! ' I then 
 offered a few words in favour of the Crown peasants of the 
 north, against whom the wood-cutting remark was directed, 
 and spoke of their intelligence, honesty, and the absence of 
 all great crimes, and how it had astonished us to travel through 
 so wide a space, sleeping with our doors open, and in lofts or 
 where we could, without being robbed, and in tracts where 
 no soldiers or police existed. ' Oh ! ' added he, ' we are not 
 however so savage as to allow such things.' 
 
 " After asking what was to be the length of our next tour, 
 and what we hoped to find out and see, he desired me to 
 express every wish to his officers, and all my wants should 
 be supplied. 
 
 " He inquired about my former career, in what arms I had 
 served, where and when, whether I was married, whether my 
 wife ever came with me. On my saying that the day was 
 when you were always at my side, and sketched and worked 
 for me, he added, ' C'est ainsi avec ma femme, mais helas sa 
 saute* ne le permet plus, elle a eu quinze couches.' Thus he 
 chatted away, and talked of his children, and the happiness 
 of his social circle. 
 
 " On my saying that I had served in infantry, cavalry, and 
 staff in Portugal, Spain, and Sicily, his Majesty evidently 
 took to me, for he said that his doctrine always had been that 
 the army was the best school for every profession, and he 
 was right glad to see that it made a good geologist. I then 
 
1841.] THE EMPEROR NICHOLAS I. 321 
 
 expressed how strong a desire I had to see the Eussian army, 
 adding that I had been out at six in the morning in the 
 Champ de Mars, and had already seen his Majesty working 
 some regiments of cavalry. ' What ! ' said he, ' talk of that 
 morning drill ; we were all dirty and not fit to be seen : 
 to-morrow you shall see us better.' And then calling General 
 Benhendorff, ' Donnez un bon cheval a M. Murchison pour 
 la Grande Parade.' He then added, ' Mais c'est a Moscou 
 que vous deviez nous voir parmi nos enfants c'est ainsi 
 que rimperatrice et moi nous appelons nos Eusses.' 
 
 " He talked with favour of his good English friends, and 
 how well they had always served him. ' Alas ! ' said he, 
 ' we have just lost two in the space of a few days, and on 
 
 Friday we bury Admiral -, an excellent officer and a 
 
 very brave man, whom I greatly regret.' 
 
 " Two days had passed, and amidst my thousand occupa- 
 tions I had forgotten the Emperor's words. On Friday 
 morning, when in my dressing-gown, a la Russe, at break- 
 fast, the son of old Mrs. Wilson, our landlady, rushed in ex- 
 claiming, ' La, mother, only think of it ! At eight o'clock 
 the Emperor came in a single drosky to the English Church, 
 and had to wait I know not how long before the parson came, 
 and then he went through all the ceremony.' The old Ad- 
 miral, being a Protestant, was buried in a vault under the 
 English Church. I then bemoaned my want of tact in not 
 having had my uniform on and ready at the church to meet 
 the great man who thus honoured the memory of my coun- 
 tryman." 
 
 The letters and diaries written by our traveller at this 
 season of rejoicing contain records of little else than the 
 names of the great folks at whose houses he dined, or whom 
 
 VOL. i. x 
 
322 SIR RODERICK MURCHISON. [IMI. 
 
 he met at the Imperial entertainments. During the day he 
 seems to have found time for an occasional interview with 
 some of the scientific men of St. Petersburg, and for desul- 
 tory preparation for his journey. But evidently courtiers 
 and court life had for the time quite dispossessed geologists 
 and geology in the attentions of the author of the " Silurian 
 System." At the beginning of the week following that in 
 which he had made the acquaintance of the Czar and Impe- 
 rial family, he attended a ball given by the newly married 
 Czarewitch. From his reminiscences of that evening a few 
 sentences may be quoted. 
 
 " The Emperor talked to me again, asking me what I had 
 been doing this morning. ' Four hours,' said he, ' at the 
 School of Mines, and two hours with Professor Eichwald ! 
 Why, you will quite tire yourself before you set out on your 
 long journey. You must have good stout legs,' he continued, 
 passing his hand at the same time to the side of my thigh, 
 which he pinched. He then discoursed of discipline, system, 
 etc., and alluding to the review of the morrow, he observed, 
 ' You will see three of my sons in the corps of the cadets.' 
 'The Grand Duke Constantino will, I suppose, command 
 them?' said I. 'Command!' replied he. 'No, indeed! he 
 will not even be in the front rank of privates ; he is yet 
 too young. The little fellow has plenty of talent, but 
 requires to be kept in order. We must have a good bridle 
 on him for some time to come.' His Majesty again spoke to 
 me with gratitude concerning my labours, and said he had 
 no doubt my success in my present profession was mainly 
 due to my old military education, which he thought was the 
 best school for all men. 
 
 " The balls, parties, and reviews attendant on the Imperial 
 
1841.] START FROM ST. PETERSBURG. 323 
 
 marriage being over, it was time to take to real work, and to 
 begin the geological researches on the grand scale which had 
 been devised through the departmental activity of General 
 Tcheffkine, then serving under the Minister of Finance, 
 Cancrine, and being chief of the School of Mines." 
 
 Count von Keyserling was named by the Imperial Govern- 
 ment as one of the geologists of the expedition, with the in- 
 valuable Lieutenant Koksharof, who was again appointed to 
 accompany the travellers, and smooth their way for them. 
 The plan of operations embraced a series of traverses of the 
 vast central and southern provinces of the empire, together 
 with as full an examination as could be made of the chain 
 of the Ural Mountains. The party was to divide for short 
 periods, and meet again at given points, to compare and con- 
 tinue its observations, with the expectation of being able, per- 
 haps, to concentrate the work of even two summers into one. 
 
 "All our inspections of collections, schools of mines, 
 academies, etc., being over, and our notebooks filled with 
 memoranda of things to be seen in Russia in Europe and the 
 Ural Mountains, there was still one grand public fete to be 
 witnessed. The Emperor, as Cancrine had reminded me, 
 had asked me to see him among his true Eussians at Mos- 
 cow. But this was not to take place for a fortnight, and in 
 that time the geological division under my orders might 
 effect much. So we galloped away to Moscow." 
 
 Their object was to examine the various outcrops of 
 limestone and thin seams of coal south of Moscow a task 
 which was successfully accomplished without any note- 
 worthy incident. Up and away to their labours, sometimes 
 by three o'clock in the morning, the travellers contrived to 
 get over a goodly number of leagues of country, and, rattling 
 
324 SIR RODERICK MURCHISON. [mi. 
 
 over the ground in their tilega, to raise many a thick cloud 
 of dust from the " Tchornaia Zemlia " or black-earth of the 
 Eussian plains, so that they returned to Moscow in a sadly- 
 begrimed condition, but in time for the fetes. 
 
 " The great event of the Emperor presenting the heir- 
 apparent to his people was about to come off. At 10 A.M. 
 we drove to the Kremlin. We were ushered through crowds 
 of Eussian officers in the palace, and eventually found our 
 way to the top of the building. I was on the balcony, close 
 to the room whence the Emperor issued. He observed me, 
 and nodded to me. At 1 1 he issued on foot and descended 
 the steps in full Cossack dress to the Grande Place, which 
 he had to cross to reach the great church, and at least 
 20,000 persons now filled it. A very narrow way had been 
 formed up to this moment, but when the great bell tolled 
 and Nicholas issued forth to the threshold, all line was 
 broken, and the crowd presented itself in one dense mass 
 before him like a wall He stepped down towards them, 
 and some touching his clothes, others his hands, he waved 
 his hand gently up and down, and the dense mass opened 
 out before him. like a wedge he worked his way through 
 the adoring multitude, who were clinging round his legs 
 and touching his clothes. . , . 
 
 " Profiting by Demidoff' s kindness, by half-past twelve 
 we finally stormed the Kremlin, and forced on into the 
 central tower, where we placed the niece of Napoleon [the 
 Princess Mathilde] between De Verneuil and myself, like a 
 Princess of the Kremlin, M. Demidoff acting as her Eussian 
 marito, and we as her French and English aides-de-camp. 
 We were destined to wait for the great sight an hour or two, 
 during which excellent sandwiches and good Madeira and 
 
i84i.] FESTIVITIES AT MOSCOW. 325 
 
 sherry, and the French conversation, full of naive and 
 sparkling sallies from the daughter of Jerome, made us pass 
 the time most agreeably. At length the cortege arrived the 
 good Marie in her caleche and four greys, the Emperor on 
 her right hand, her brothers on the left, and the Grand Duke 
 He'ritier passing close along the line of troops. When they 
 entered the Holy Gate of the Kremlin, the sight of course 
 closed for us. 
 
 " As we descended the staircase, thinking all sights were 
 over, the attendants stopped us at a doorway, and, in an 
 instant, the Emperor, with the Grand Duchess on his arm, 
 passed within a few paces of us. He at once recognised us 
 with a gracious nod. Of this I should not have felt so cer- 
 tain if Count Benhendorff had not told me two hours after- 
 wards that his Majesty had informed him of our position. 
 Nicholas's eye is everywhere, and long may it be so ! 
 
 " Count Benhendorff gave us an account of the Imperial 
 reception. At Ribinsk a thriving commercial town on the 
 Volga, with 30,000 inhabitants it appears that the people 
 who had never seen the Emperor kept up such a roar under 
 the Imperial residence, that at last, when midnight came, they 
 were requested to allow the Emperor to sleep. The hint 
 was no sooner given than obeyed. But what followed ? 
 Not a man slunk sulkily away ; the loyal mass lay down and 
 slept at their posts till the return of day was ushered in by 
 a general chanticleer from those sturdy monarch-loving Mus- 
 covites. Well then may Nicholas exclaim, 'These good 
 people are not yet so advanced as to have learnt not to love 
 their sovereign ' words which he used to me in speaking of 
 the Russians of the interior. 
 
 " Benhendorff also informed me that the horse-artillery 
 
326 SIR RODERICK MURCHISON. [mi. 
 
 which we saw this morning had marched 110 versts the 
 day before, i.e. seventy miles ! This beats the famous march 
 of the old Fourth Dragoons, my father-in-law, General 
 Hugonin's regiment, which marched from Canterbury to 
 London in a day, and acted that evening in the Borough in 
 quelling one of the Lord George Gordon riots in 1784." 
 
 But it was now time to doff uniforms and court-dresses, 
 and take to the more homely garb of travelling geologists. 
 Murchison and his friends had planned their journey in such 
 a way that it should comprise many minor lateral excur- 
 sions, and they now proceeded to put the plan into execu- 
 tion. Starting from Moscow, they crossed the empire by 
 Vladimir, Kasan, and Perm into the Ural Mountains, and 
 the edge of the vast steppes of Siberia. From these remote 
 bounds they turned southwards to explore the southern 
 Urals as far as Orsk, whence, bending their course once more 
 in a westerly direction, they passed through Orenburg, re- 
 crossing the Volga at Sarepta, traversing the country of the 
 Don Cossacks to the Sea of Azov, and then turning north- 
 ward to make another traverse of the empire back by 
 Moscow to St. Petersburg. 
 
 Five busy months passed away in these journeys. Mur- 
 chison kept as usual a full diary. Being mainly geological, 
 his memoranda were subsequently elaborated into the great 
 work on " Eussia and the Ural Mountains." But among 
 them occur records of incidents of travel and other notes, 
 which give us glimpses of the scenery and people among 
 whom he lived, and of the way in which this extensive and 
 rapid survey of the Eussian domains was achieved. 
 
 As on the previous journey, the main highways of the 
 
i84i.] THE START FROM MOSCOW. 327 
 
 country were followed. Provided with a formidable Imperial 
 document, countersigned and double-sealed to enforce atten- 
 tion from all persons in authority along their route, the 
 travellers had usually little difficulty in procuring horses at 
 the stations. In most cases, indeed, the chief dignitary of 
 each place waited on them personally, and in not a few in- 
 stances treated them with the frankest hospitality. The 
 kindness which Murchison experienced in this way even in 
 the wildest tracts of the empire, filled him with that deep 
 affection for Russia and the Russians which used to show 
 itself continually all through his life. But neither Imperial 
 ukase nor kindly proffered assistance could wholly over- 
 come the natural difficulties of the country. The geologists 
 had made up their mind to a good deal of rough fare and 
 sorry lodging, nor in these respects were their prognostica- 
 tions unrealized. 
 
 During the earlier part of the journey through Vladimir, 
 Nijnii Novgorod, and Kazan, there was little either in the 
 geology or the scenery to delay the expedition. Murchison, 
 indeed, seems to have got so disgusted with the interminable 
 red sandstones and marls as to break out into some doggerel 
 lines in French, that being the language which was now his 
 only mode of communication with his travelling companions 
 and the natives of the country. These rocks were not yet 
 understood by him. He became proud enough of them before 
 long, for they furnished to him the type of a new geological 
 subdivision, to which, from the province where they were so 
 well developed, he gave the name of " Permian." 
 
 In spite of these tedious red rocks, Kazan afforded some 
 interest. The fat jolly Vice- Governor had instructions to look 
 well after the travellers, and it would appear that he did his 
 
328 SIR RODERICK MURCHISON. [mi. 
 
 best. In their honour he donned his full uniform, white 
 laced hat, and numerous orders, and arrived at their inn with 
 the determination that they should see everything in Kazan 
 forthwith. In vain they explained that one of the Professors 
 had already kindly offered to escort them through the collec- 
 tions of the University. What ! had he not received the 
 Imperial command to look after them himself? and besides, 
 had he not been a sailor in the days of the old war, when 
 the British and Eussian fleets were allied, and did he not 
 still remember a few broken words of English " I beg you, 
 sare," " ver much wind," etc. ! He would show them the 
 collections, and everything and everybody too. De Verneuil 
 and von Keyserling had made a detour. Murchison, therefore, 
 under the supervision of the Vice-Governor, took further 
 notes for the Ural Survey from the specimens and informa- 
 tion obtainable from the Professors, and attended sundry 
 feasts into which the exuberant hospitality of Kazan broke 
 out. When the party reunited, and all was ready for the 
 march again, the Vice-Governor must needs give one fare- 
 well banquet. " We sat down," Murchison writes, " forty- 
 five in a small room, and the Vice-Governor was quite 
 charming with his old sailor-loves of ' Sally Cox ' and 
 ' Mary Dickenson ' when in England." 
 
 Over many leagues of red rocks the party journeyed 
 through the government of Perm towards the long low 
 ridges of the Urals. They passed on the way a gang of 
 manacled prisoners bound for Siberia, to whom, amid his 
 notes of " Eoth-todt-liegende," " Nagelflue," and other geolo- 
 gical matters, Murchison devotes a few words in his journal. 
 About a hundred and fifty men and women, under a strong 
 military escort, the men in some cases manacled in couples, 
 
]84i.] SIBERIAN EXILES. 329 
 
 were marching to their exile. "Thank God!" he writes, 
 " in England we have the sea for our high-road to banish- 
 ment ; for such scenes are very harassing." 
 
 While the exiles were tramping along the highway, the 
 geologists, having gained a rising ground, were luxuriating 
 in the first distinct view of the real crest, if it may be so 
 called, of the chain of the Ural Mountains a long, slightly 
 undulated line, rising behind a succession of wooded ridges, 
 and forming a singularly unimpressive landscape, considered 
 as a part of one of the leading mountain-chains of Europe. It 
 was not easy to say when the mountain land was really 
 entered, so gradual had been the ascent. " Though the Ural 
 had been a chain in my imagination, we were really going 
 over it at a gallop, the highest hill, indeed, not exceeding (in 
 elevation above its base) our Surrey Lower Green-sandstone." 
 With no rocks on either side of the dull road, and with dark 
 rainy weather, the passage of one of the depressions in the 
 low watershed of Europe and Asia became dreary and 
 monotonous, till the travellers found themselves in the 
 heart of the gold-mining region and in a comfortable inn at 
 Ekaterinburg. 
 
 Over vast tracts of Eussia the rocks lie in horizontal 
 sheets, so little disturbed that, failing river gorges and other 
 natural sections, it becomes no easy task to determine their 
 proper order. Like a series of sheets of cloth laid on a 
 table, the uppermost conceals those which lie beneath it. 
 Eastwards, however, they have been ridged up into the long 
 swell of the Urals, and our travellers, having already 
 acquired a good deal of miscellaneous information from the 
 labours of Humboldt, G. Eose, Ehrenberg, Helmersen, Hoff- 
 man, and others, regarding that little-known tract, were now 
 
330 SIR RODERICK MURCHISON. [mi. 
 
 bent upon discovering how far the elevation of the Ural 
 chain had exposed the edges of the strata, so as to allow their 
 order and thickness and fossil contents to be determined in 
 an easier and more satisfactory way than could be done over 
 leagues of the flat lowlands. They lost no time in beginning 
 their work, and before many weeks had passed, by dividing 
 their forces into two parties, and moving upon separate but 
 parallel lines of research, with occasional reunions by con- 
 verging traverses at the chief mining establishments, they 
 succeeded in ascertaining the general geological structure of 
 the Ural Mountains, in such a way as to permit the main 
 masses of the rocks in that chain to be effectually compared 
 with the geological succession already established elsewhere 
 in Europe. 
 
 One great impediment in their way was the want of any 
 even tolerable map on which to record their work a want, 
 the paralysing effect of which only the geologist who has 
 been similarly placed can adequately appreciate. " Were I 
 Emperor of Russia," he writes, "I would make verily at least 
 one thousand of my lazy officers work for their laced coats, 
 and produce me a good map, or they should study physical 
 geography in Eastern Siberia. Excepting General Tcheff kine 
 and a few, very few, I never met with any man who knew 
 how to handle a map. It is really an affair of an hour to 
 get a governor to make his way upon a map along a well- 
 beaten road. I never shall forget my surprise last year at 
 Nijnii Novgorod, when the Government House was ran- 
 sacked for a map, upon which my line of march to the south 
 of Moscow was to be traced. At length what came forth 
 from this centre of Eussian wealth and commerce, in the 
 very fair of Nijnii, and in the Government House? A 
 
1841.] RUSSIAN IGNORANCE OF MAPS. 331 
 
 district map of Schoubert's which I have so anathematized ? 
 No, but one of the little three-rouble maps which the 
 common traveller buys, with simply the names of the chief 
 places and small towns ! The same occurred at Kostroma, 
 where the Governor had no other. 
 
 " If such be the case in the heart of Eussia, how are we to 
 expect that the best-informed natives here in the Urals 
 should have any idea of their broken and diversified region ? 
 Eussia must produce geographers before she can expect to 
 have geologists. The cost of a single regiment of cavalry- 
 would effect this great national work ; and would that the 
 Emperor could be led to see its desirableness and efficacy for 
 all good measures of internal improvement ! I never yet 
 heard a Eussian speak of any place as being east, west, north, 
 or south of such a point, but merely as so many versts from 
 this or that town. Ask him in what direction and he is 
 dumb. First he will say it is to the right or to the left, 
 according as he may have travelled; and it is only by a 
 serious cross-examination, which would puzzle a barrister of 
 the northern circuit, that you can guess at something like 
 the fact. But alas ! after fancying myself informed, how 
 wide have I found nature from their mark ! Here, for 
 example, you will find people disputing as to whether a 
 leading place, such as Stataoust, is to the east or west 
 side of the Ural; and as for the roads, they trust to 
 their clever peasants, stout horses, and ever-resisting taran- 
 tasse." 
 
 The absence of reliable maps, though it proved a con- 
 tinual hindrance in the process of geologizing, was never 
 allowed to retard the bodily activity of the party. Of that 
 party and its local auxiliaries, as they started on one of 
 
332 SIR RODERICK MURCHISON. [i84i. 
 
 their exploratory tours, the journal gives the following 
 account : 
 
 " A route from the Zavod [mining-station] of Chresto- 
 vodsvisgensk across the Ural chain to the valley of the Is, 
 on the eastern watershed, was now to be undertaken, as 
 arranged in our programme. But this was no slight 
 affair, inasmuch as no party had travelled by this old and 
 abandoned corduroy road through the forests and sloughs 
 for many years, yet, by sending peasants across, arrange- 
 ments were made. 
 
 " At 3 A.M., 2d July, I roused the whole party, and at ^ 
 past four we were in march from the Zavod, being a party 
 of twenty cavaliers of most grotesque and varied outline. 
 The President of the Geological Society need not describe 
 himself. The Vice-President of the Geological Society of 
 France sported his long blue Spanish cloak, and a broad- 
 brimmed, round-topped, Moscow grey hat, which, on the 
 back of a Wouvermanns' grey horse, formed an essential 
 item in the motley group. Herr Graube, the Master of 
 the Mint, who led us, had his long boots above his knees, 
 and large furred coloshes, with his little German cap. Von 
 Keyserling, in his green cap and jacket, bestrode a gallant 
 brown, and his servant, Juan the Venerable, turned out on 
 a Eussian saddle in a long black cloak, on a white Cossack- 
 like beast. The Ispravnick of the district, who honoured 
 us, was a sort of sub-military looking figure, with spectacles 
 and Life-guard boots, superadded to a black shooting- 
 jacket. The German doctor of the Zavod, a most obliging 
 man, was mounted on a capital iron-grey, with high action. 
 Lastly came our two Russian officers, Karspinski and 
 Koksharoff, both of whom were knocked up by our rapid 
 
1841.] GEOLOGIZING IN THE URALS. 333 
 
 ride of yesterday. The former, dreading the result, to-day 
 had strapped a large pillow on his russia-leather red and 
 yellow demi-peak saddle. Our bearded fellows were per- 
 haps the best for the painter, with their caftans, double- 
 coned hats, and long boots ; one armed with an axe behind ; 
 another with De VerneuiTs gun in hand ; a third with 
 long Turkish pipes ; and others astride of animals carrying 
 sacks, bags, and beds. 
 
 " Our start was somewhat cheerless as to weather, for 
 the day looked lowering ; and in a few minutes we were in 
 the interminable boggy forests which fringe the flanks of 
 the Ural. It was soon evident that all haste was in vain. 
 The sloughs exceeded all that my imagination had conjured 
 up. The road was a sort of bridle-road, not to be described 
 to English understanding, for it consisted in most parts, 
 and for ten or twenty versts, of planks and round trees, 
 most of them rotten and breaking, placed over the quag- 
 mires here and there, the track along which seemed hope- 
 less, but for the dexterity of a Eussian horse. If the plank 
 broke and his leg went in up to the hock, he pulled it leisurely 
 out, whilst with the other he was righting his way up the 
 rounded slippery single plank which remained. If his 
 tread on one end brought the other up in his face, he would 
 gently and evenly move on till the equilibrium was estab- 
 lished, and he gained another safe footing. Add to this, 
 massive trees, including the noble Pinus cembra and others, 
 lying across the road, immense roots branching in all 
 directions, sedge and long grass up to the horse's belly, 
 and you may have some idea of a bridle-road in the 
 Ural." 
 
 Not much geology could be done under such unfavourable 
 
334 
 
 SIR RODERICK MURCHISON. 
 
 [1841. 
 
 conditions, nor could any clear notion be formed of the 
 general aspect of the Ural chain, though the peculiarities 
 of the wooded regions became only too familiar. Now and 
 then the travellers succeeded in getting above the line of 
 wood, so as to catch a glimpse of the summits of the 
 Ural and the country beyond. Thus at the Katchkanar 
 they " at last found a true mountain in the Ural " rough 
 
 View from the Summit of the Katchkanar, North Ural, looking northwards. 
 (From Russia in Europe, vol. i. p. 392.) 
 
 splintered crags, shooting high over the damp sombre forests, 
 and nourishing in their crevices and amid their slopes a 
 bright and luxuriant vegetation which recalled that of some 
 Swiss valley. From this peak they could look on one side 
 over the far rolling sea of dark pine, with here and there a 
 snow-streaked summit rising island-like out of it ; on the 
 other side lay the vast plains of Siberia, with the level 
 
1841.] GEOLOGIZING IN THE URAL RIVERS. 335 
 
 featureless surface, and to the eye at least with the bound- 
 less horizon of a great sea. 1 
 
 At other places on the crest of the chain rocky scarps 
 were encountered. From Stataoust the party reached some 
 conspicuous rocks rising along the water parting between 
 Europe and Asia. " Clambering up to the summit, and 
 with one leg on either Continent, we sang ' God save the 
 Emperor.' In this sequestered spot, however, neither officers 
 nor workmen knew the present national air, which I had 
 heard at St. Petersburg and Moscow, but began to chant 
 our old ' God save the King,' which they had sung since 
 the time of Peter the Great. I then hummed this new 
 air, and this music of Levoff was thus first given out in 
 the western borders of Siberia." 
 
 But the most exciting and instructive work which they 
 carried out in these remote regions was the exploration of 
 some of the river- courses. Owing to the need of abundant 
 water-power for mining purposes, the streams had been 
 manipulated in many different ways, some being turned 
 into a succession of dams and waterfalls, others deprived of 
 their water to fill lateral reservoirs. It was in these natural 
 sections that the true structure of the Ural might be most 
 confidently searched for, and special care was given to them, 
 though but for the active co-operation of the mining 
 authorities, these defiles would have proved far more for- 
 midable obstacles than the morasses and corduroy bridle- 
 tracks. How the work was done may be judged from the 
 following extract : 
 
 " Descending the river Issetz in canoes, between rocky 
 banks of micaceous schists and granite, we came to the 
 1 See Plate, p. 392 of Russia and the Ural Mountains. 
 
336 SIR RODERICK MURGHISON. [is4i. 
 
 mill of Paulken, where the miller offered us tea, observing 
 that his first love was God and the Emperor, the next 
 strangers ; for he had travelled in Russia, and knew the 
 value of hospitality. The descent of this river is quite 
 unique, for the water-traveller must quit his canoe at every 
 one of the hundred mill-races. There are upwards of two 
 hundred of these mill-dams between Ekaterinburg and 
 Kamensk. At every one of these, one's goods, chattels, and 
 self must go out and in, and his canoe be shoved over the 
 rough roots, sticks, and blocks (often held together by 
 large blocks of stones), and dropped some eight or 
 fifteen feet as the case may be. No ordinary traveller 
 can execute this journey without great loss of time and 
 patience. For us the authorities were so active that at 
 each stoppage a multitude was waiting to get us through. 
 The sub-officer put every ' starosta ' in play, and our descent 
 was a regular press. ' Stupai, pikarea, poshol ! ' and on we 
 went (at what cost it matters not in this land), carrying 
 with us the inmates of one village till we reached the next. 
 No one who has not descended this Siberian river would 
 believe how much comfort and industry appear on its banks. 
 No mill, numerous as they were, was without six or more 
 little carts before it. A dense population lives all along 
 the Issetz. Good white large churches rise up here and 
 there, and everywhere the cottages are nice and clean." 
 
 More adventurous was the descent of one of the streams on 
 the other or western slope of the Ural. Von Keyserling and 
 De Verneuil had been making independent observations, and 
 the party re-united at a mining station on the Serebrianska, 
 a small stream flowing into the Tchussovaya, which descends 
 into the great Permian lowlands. " The descent of the Sere- 
 
1841.] 
 
 PERILS OF URAL NAVIGATION. 
 
 337 
 
 briaiiska," he says, " was one of the most memorable days 
 of my life. The distance to be accomplished by this winding 
 stream was seventy versts, or nearly fifty English miles. 
 When I went to rest, the bed of the river was almost quite 
 dry, with not water enough to drown a rat, and yet we were 
 to effect the miracle of floating down in a six-oared boat. 
 When I awoke a furious stream was rushing down, and the 
 
 Lake of Aushkul, South UraL (From Russia in Europe, voL i. p. 359.) 
 
 natives were beginning to get canoes. The good comman- 
 dant, having the Imperial order that I was to descend by 
 water, had let off an upper lake, and thus made a river in 
 a fine dry sunny day ! 
 
 " The waters having been let off for us, and the river bed 
 filled, we effected our embarkation amid three cheers. The 
 river was muddy, and had rocks hidden, with very sharp 
 VOL. i. Y 
 
338 SIR RODERICK MURCHISON. [iwi. 
 
 curves of the stream. With a hundred groundings and 
 stoppages, we got tired of our big boat of honour, and took 
 to the canoes. These answered well for a while, but trust- 
 ing to shoot through some stakes and nets (myself on my 
 back at the head of the canoe), we (i.e. De Verneuil and 
 myself) were capsized in a strong current. I saved my 
 note-book (see the stains), but my cloak, bag, pipe, etc., went 
 floating down. A curious scene followed, after we had 
 scrambled out to the shore. The other canoe shot by and 
 picked up our floating apparatus. Fortunately this letting 
 off the waters had brought down some natives to catch fish, 
 and they had a fire, by which we dried ourselves, whilst 
 their large wolf-dogs lay around us. When we re-em- 
 barked, we shot several ducks (Merjanier), and here and 
 there found limestones and shales striking to the N.N.W. 
 Some of the limestones were charged with Devonian fossils. 
 
 "After this, evening began to fall. Saddles, anticlinals, 
 and synclinals arose in magnificent masses on the rocky 
 banks, but our boat-bottom was soon knocked to pieces by 
 grounding at least a hundred times, and whisking round as in 
 a waltz at each shock. It now filled so rapidly that we had 
 just time to escape. We had then a fine evening scene. 
 We landed on shingle, and got into the forest, not having 
 seen a house or hut for fifty miles. The dense wildness of 
 the scene, the jungle and intricacy of a Russian forest, 
 can never be forgotten. We had to cross fallen trees and 
 branches, and to force through underwood up to our necks. 
 
 "After our various night evolutions, sometimes by land 
 and sometimes by water, we finally reached our ' derevna ' 
 (Ust Serebrianska) at two A.M., wet up to the middle, by 
 walking through moist jungle and meadow. Our men were 
 
1841.] 
 
 NAVIGATION IN THE URALS. 
 
 339 
 
 very amphibia, and required no food. They had been half 
 the day in that stream, pulling, hauling, shoving, and shout- 
 ing, and never eating or drinking. We had to awake the 
 chief peasant's family, and were soon in a fine hot room, 
 with children sleeping all about. 
 
 " I awoke with the bright sun, after three hours' rest, and 
 
 Gorge of the Tchussovaya, west flank of UraL Contorted Devonian and Carboniferous 
 Kocks. (From Russia in Europe, vol. i. p. 386.) 
 
 pulling my shoes out of the oven, and my dried clothes 
 from the various long poles, proceeded after a warm tea to 
 embark on the Tschussovaya, into which the Serebrianska 
 flows. The Tschussovaya being a much larger river, we had 
 
340 SIR RODERICK MURCHISON. [mi. 
 
 no difficulty in boating down it, and we had a most instruc- 
 tive and exciting day, as we passed in the deep gorges of 
 Devonian and Carboniferous limestone, here thrown up in 
 vertical beds to form peaks, then coiled over even like ropes 
 in a storm, or broken in every direction. Making many 
 sections, with many memoranda, the 17th June was 
 finished." 
 
 " On the following day we worked away down the river 
 in the same great leaky boat as before, the boatmen singing 
 their carols, and abusing the Ispravnicks and proprietors 
 who force them to drink bad ' vodki ' or whisky by their 
 monopoly. Other songs were gentle, plaintive love-ditties, 
 so unlike what our coarse country fellows would sing. 
 With no stimulants, getting but black bread, and working 
 in wet clothes, for they were continually in the river shoving 
 the boat on, they sang in rhymes, one of which as trans- 
 lated by Koksharoff was : 
 
 ' My love she lives on the banks of a rapid stream, 
 And when she goes to the garden to pull a rose, she thinks of me.' 
 
 Another of these ditties began ' Mary, come back from 
 the bower.' A third was a comic song, quizzing a soldier 
 who got into a house when tipsy. A fourth was a jollifica- 
 tion of peasants in a drinking-shop, to beat the maker of 
 bad brandy, with a famous loud refrain in which all the 
 boatmen joined heartily." 
 
 "When, after toils of this kind, the travellers found them- 
 selves again in one or other of the busy mining stations, they 
 met with much courteous, and even exuberant, hospitality. 
 Thus before leaving Ekaterinburg a dinner was given in their 
 honour, to which the chief officials of the place were asked. 
 Delicacies of all kinds, as well as costly wines, appeared at 
 
1841.] 
 
 HOSPITALITY IN THE URALS. 
 
 341 
 
 the table. "The dinner," says Murchison, "finished by a 
 bumper of champagne to my wife, and throwing all the 
 glasses out of the building, that they might never again be 
 used. I made a speech in reply, and begged to have a top 
 and a bottom of the broken glasses, that I might reunite them 
 with a silver plate in England, and inscribe on it my grate- 
 ful thanks." 
 
 Posts were neither frequent nor regular, or at least the 
 geologists were too constantly on the move to be able to count 
 upon many fixed addresses to which letters could be sent for 
 them. Murchison, however, though busy, body and soul, in 
 Russian geology, naturally found his thoughts many a time 
 far away among his friends at home. On 28th July, by four 
 
 Plain of Limestone in the South Ural (From Russia in Europe, vol. i. p. 439.) 
 
 in the morning, he was up, had boiled his own kettle and 
 breakfasted, and was writing up his journal notes : " This 
 day the British Association is assembling at Plymouth, and 
 I drank success to it. How few of the members there will 
 have lighter hearts than their general secretary in Siberia ! 
 .... In this poor dreary spot (for the Steppes are like the 
 flat border counties of England and Scotland) I made two 
 children at all events right happy by giving them new large 
 copper pieces." 
 
 It was in the southern parts of the Ural that the 
 travellers had most experience of those grassy plains, to 
 which the term Steppes is applied " wide, monotonous, 
 
342 SIR RODERICK MURCHISQN. [isu. 
 
 featureless plateaux, the withered grassy surface undulating 
 to the south and west, while to the east all is boundless 
 even. Not a glimpse of what may be called the Ural 
 mountains. The country becomes more decidedly southern ; 
 or, in other words, bare, barren, and bad. Dried dung, piled 
 up, is now used in place of wood, and Kirghis and Calrnuck 
 faces appear under the military uniform in very poor villages. 
 The road now quits the low eminences on which the station 
 is placed, defended by men of all arms, including Cossacks, 
 and passes along the wide sea of the Steppe. Low bushes 
 of a sort of Myrica are mixed with a little culture of oats and 
 corn. The very road was grassy, and we galloped by the 
 first armed mounted archer Bashkirs I had seen, with a 
 stout double bow, and twenty heavy arrows. They are used 
 in protecting the conveyance of goods." 
 
 Notices of some of the most striking features of the tribes 
 through which the journey led occur in the journal. " Our 
 Bashkir drivers had a name for every hill, however small. 
 The principal man, or coachman, was a fine long, aquiline- 
 nosed, wild- looking, good-humoured fellow, with a cap of 
 loose shaggy fur. He had the three wheelers in hand, pre- 
 ceded by two postilions with a pair each, and all these were 
 headed by a long lad riding a leader in advance. Our 
 equipage and ponies measured fifty feet in length. The 
 Bashkirs, being accustomed only to horseback, are not good 
 whips like the Rushki, and their horses are too weak to 
 charge a hill j but they go down one furiously, no slight 
 danger for the riders, and for us also, who, in case of a fall, 
 would have been well smashed." 
 
 These Bashkir of the Ural had no sympathy with the 
 geologists in their search after the mammoth and other bones 
 
1841.] LIFE AMONG THE BASHKIR. 343 
 
 found in the gold-drifts and ancient alluvia of those regions. 
 " These they considered as relics of their great forefathers, 
 saying, ' Take our gold if you will, but leave us, for God's 
 sake, the bones of our ancestors !'" 
 
 One hot day the party arrived at a little station in the 
 South Ural. " Dined at this lonely spot. All still as death 
 at noon. Grasses all burnt up. People asleep, but soon 
 awakened. The Cossack women of the Uralsk are fine broad 
 creatures in red dresses. The confidence of these primitive 
 people is very great, for they allowed us to grope for tea- 
 spoons and bread in the cupboards in which their bank-notes 
 and roubles were lying loose !" 
 
 Living in Bashkir tents, the geologists learned to relish a 
 sort of diet which anywhere else might have been deemed 
 hardly tolerable. One staple article of food in summer 
 among these simple people is " Koumiss," a preparation of 
 mare's milk, " the staff of life, the bread, meat, and wine of 
 the Bashkir." Of this liquor Murchison would appear to 
 have become fond, and to have thriven on it. He tells how 
 at one of the Bashkir stations, where the party had spent 
 the night, " after a very good breakfast, all sorts of saluta- 
 tions followed, such as the drinking of Koumiss to the 
 prosperity of our host. Then we heard his story of losing 
 sixty sheep, killed by three wolves last winter ; next we found 
 that he paid so many roubles for his present wife, and that 
 her dress cost him more than herself. I expressed a wish 
 to him to have a Bashkir vest, belt, pouch, and cap, and he 
 offered me his own. It was with difficulty that I got him 
 to take the value to replace them." 1 
 
 1 " This dress I afterwards wore at a fancy ball at Stafford House, 
 when I saluted the old Duke of Wellington in true Bashkir style. Not 
 
344 SIR RODERICK MURCHISON. [mi. 
 
 At last, with note-books laden with descriptions and 
 sections of the various traverses which they had made of 
 the Ural chain, the travellers began to move once more into 
 the great western plain. They had succeeded in reaching 
 the central masses of that chain, and in recognising, by fossil 
 evidence, that from a nucleus of granite and crystalline 
 rocks, Silurian, Devonian, and Carboniferous strata are suc- 
 cessively thrown off. This evidence had been industriously 
 gathered from river-channels, road -sides, mining operations, 
 and every available source of information. For days to- 
 gether they had been off soon after daybreak for renewed 
 hammering, and many a time night descended upon them 
 while they were still plying their task. Now and then, 
 indeed, when pinched for time, they even essayed to use 
 their hammers in the dark, after the manner of M. Boube'e, 
 whose example Murchison used jocularly to quote, up to the 
 end of his life. 1 
 
 It was now time to turn westwards, towards the coal- 
 fields of the south of Russia, the exploration of which had 
 been fixed as one of the chief objects of the expedition. 
 But Orenburg lay in their way, with its governor, the brave, 
 though unfortunate, hero of the Khivan expedition, General 
 Perovski. He was then at his country quarters, in a 
 picturesque wooded valley at the far edge of the Steppe, a 
 long way to the north-east of the town. To see a little 
 more geology, with a taste of Eussian sport, and the 
 
 one of my intimate friends recognised me. The sword, etc., I had from 
 Stataoust, and medals cl la fotsse, hung round me." 
 
 1 This geologist, said Sir Eoderick, used to maintain that a good deal 
 of geological work could be done as well by night as by day. Rocks had 
 three well-marked sounds under the hammer Plff, Paff, and Puff! The 
 first of these indicated the hard crystalline rocks, the second the sand- 
 stones, and the third the clays ! 
 
1841.] GENERAL PEROVSKL 345 
 
 acquaintance of a noted Eussian soldier, were attractions 
 Murchison could not resist. So he undertook the inter- 
 minably tedious drive across the Steppe, and spent a few 
 days with more thorough pleasure than he had enjoyed since 
 leaving home. With all the comforts of civilized life, this 
 place was yet quite in the wilds, Bashkir attendants, with 
 their picturesque costumes, a blazing bonfire lighted in the 
 encampment, and the moonlight glancing on the lances of 
 the Bashkir guard. Perovski made a great impression on 
 the retired officer of the 36th. One evening he gave him 
 the following anecdote : " When the utter failure of the 
 Khivan expedition become known, all Eussia turned upon 
 me, and with any other master than my good Emperor I was 
 a ruined man. But the Emperor declared he would not 
 condemn me until the opinion of the Duke of Wellington 
 was obtained, who, being a Marshal in the Eussian army, 
 should have the whole case laid before him. This was done 
 through Baron Brunnow, and then came the Duke's dictum : 
 ' I am of opinion that General Perovski acted as a skilful 
 general, and that if he had not retreated when he did, 
 instead of losing a fourth part of his army, he might have 
 lost the whole. Success was impossible under such intense 
 cold.'" On this judgment being given, the Emperor not only 
 absolved Perovski, but gave him the government of Oren- 
 burg. The General added, " You see that I owe every- 
 thing to your illustrious Duke, and I beg of you, when you 
 return to England, to take some opportunity of letting him 
 know what a grateful person I am." " This," Murchison 
 adds, " I took care to do." 
 
 The visit to the General led actually to yet another 
 traverse of the Ural, for he showed the travellers a map of 
 
346 
 
 SIR RODERICK MURCHISON. 
 
 [1841. 
 
 the southern part of the chain, so greatly superior to any- 
 thing which they had yet been fortunate enough to meet with, 
 that it prompted a strong desire to take one final look at the 
 Ural geology, and with his help among the Bashkir popula- 
 tion, they succeeded in once more crossing the chain in its 
 central part, and collated their work in the southern and 
 northern portions. 
 
 At last, however, they had unwillingly to turn their 
 
 The Gurmaya Hills, South Ural, approaching from the Steppes. 
 (From Russia in Europe, vol. L p. 450.) 
 
 backs finally upon those picturesque ridges and fertile 
 valleys of the Southern Ural, and to speed westwards 
 through the dreary monotonous country of the Steppes. In 
 geology there was nothing either very interesting or com- 
 plicated to detain them. They therefore hurried on through 
 the Kirghis Steppes to Sarepta, crossing once more the great 
 Volga, and tracing as they went some of the limits of the 
 
1841.] IN THE STEPPES. 347 
 
 ancient sea of which the present Caspian is but a shrunk 
 remnant. Through the plains of the Don, among Cossacks 
 and Kalmucks, their course was yet more rapid. On 8th 
 September the journal records, " De Verneuil sleeping in 
 the hut, and myself in the carriage. What is a Cossack 
 post station ? Everything about it is very different from a 
 flaming great wooden Eussian station. First, you see a dot 
 upon the Steppe, which magnifies as you approach it to a 
 thing about the size of the smallest Irish hut, and not very 
 unlike one in externals, being concocted of mud and reeds, 
 with very little wood. But the interior is very different 
 from an Irish cabin. I now write in a room ten feet square, 
 and on the table lieth the regular sealed post-book. This 
 official chamber is six and a half feet high, and has a large 
 stove in the corner, a door four feet high, and two windows 
 eighteen inches by nine. The walls are all well white- 
 washed, the tables well scoured, and the floor well beaten 
 and clean swept." 
 
 Skirting the sea of Azov, they turned northwards into the 
 coal-field of the Donetz. There they made a series of most 
 important observations, bearing both on general questions of 
 geology and on the industrial resources of the Eussian 
 Empire. They found the coal-seams to lie, like many of 
 those in the north of England and in Scotland, among the 
 marine strata of the Carboniferous Limestone, there being, 
 so far as they could see, no true "Coal-measures," in the 
 geologist's sense of that term, in Eussia. They learnt, more- 
 over, that though the coal was quite workable, and had 
 indeed been mined for years, it lay among strata which, 
 unlike those of the vast tracts in the centre of the Empire, 
 had been subject to such underground disturbances as to 
 
348 SIR RODERICK MURCHISON. [mi. 
 
 present many large dislocations and many foldings. They 
 traced it westwards until they found it die out again on 
 ancient crystalline rocks, while northward and eastwards 
 they learnt that it passed under sheets of Cretaceous and 
 Tertiary deposits. 
 
 In the course of this prolonged tour, while the main 
 attention of the geologists had been given to the structure 
 of the solid rocks, their ingenuity had been on many occa- 
 sions called forth by the anomalous features presented by 
 the surface deposits of the country. These difficulties started 
 up in renewed force on the way north to Moscow. They 
 are thus stated in the journal : " The surface of Russia 
 affords some puzzling problems. In passing from south to 
 north you first meet with the tract of the northern drift, the 
 materials of which become more and more numerous at 
 every ten versts. Still the old rule (applied by me last 
 year) answers perfectly, viz., the diluvia are three- fourths 
 derived from the subjacent rocks, so as largely and loosely 
 to indicate the zone of country you are traversing, provided 
 you have the key to the subsoils of Russia. Thus, whilst 
 the loose stuff was all yellow in the country composed of 
 yellow Devonians, so to-day, viz., from Lichvin to Kaluga, 
 you are immersed either in ferruginous, or reddish, or white 
 sands. The latter prevail in great quantity in the horrible 
 tracts north and south of Peremyschl a most wretched 
 town, and their presence is well explained by the destruc- 
 tion of the yellow and white sands of the Carboniferous 
 Limestone ; for, with the exception of the section opposite to 
 Peremyschl, and one or two rare localities, the valley of the 
 Oka is here denuded to a width of several versts, which 
 space is flooded in spring-time. This is one of the numerous 
 
1841.] BLACK EARTH OF RUSSIA. 349 
 
 cases which realize in modern times (viz., in spring-floods) 
 the geologist's idea (mine at least) of the condition of the 
 earth's surface during the intermediate period, viz., shortly 
 after emersion from the sea, when the mammoth had left his 
 bones sticking in the mud. 
 
 " The drifting and excavation are explicable as in other 
 places. The vast spaces denuded and broken up in the most 
 horizontal districts explain perfectly the vast masses of local 
 detritus in the northern governments, and their transport for 
 150 versts southwards. 
 
 " But how explain the Tchornaia-zem which overlaps the 
 diluvium of the north, and is also spread over vast regions of 
 the centre and south of Eussia, sometimes in river valleys, 
 sometimes on slopes, sometimes on high plateaux, and is 
 always of precisely the same composition, without a trace of 
 true pebbles, or, in short, of any extra ingredient ? What 
 colours the black loam ? If it be of vegetable origin, whole 
 forests of mighty extent must have been destroyed to pro- 
 duce it. But how destroyed ? In all other superficial deposits, 
 whether in bog, in mud, or in the youngest tertiaries, we find 
 traces of the trees, branches, grasses, etc., but not a vestige 
 have we in the Tchornoi-zem. All is a black, uniform, finely 
 levigated paste, sometimes highly tenacious, and very much 
 so when not worked into with the plough, for after labour it 
 works into a fine black mould. In this virgin state it is 
 seldom to be seen, for 90 to 100 parts of all that is good in 
 soil, from the Ural to the swamps of Poland, is already in 
 culture. The specimens I selected, however, had evidently 
 never been touched by plough or man ; they were taken 
 from the precipitous sides of the Oka, just after a subsidence 
 of the cliffs which exposed the section, the lowest deposit of 
 
350 SIR RODERICK MURVHI80N. [i84i. 
 
 which is the iron sand which covers such large tracts in 
 Vladimir, and many governments, and overlaps the truncated 
 and denuded edges of the Devonian limestone in these parts. 
 Perhaps it is Tertiary, but only perhaps, for we have similar 
 ironstones under the chalk at Kursk, and similar limestones 
 over the Lower Jura shales at SaratofF. 
 
 " If the drift was, as I believe it to be, a great submarine 
 operation, then are we to suppose that the Tchornaia-zem is 
 the result of a great change of a pre-existing terrestrial sur- 
 face ? To believe in this seems to me very difficult, and for 
 this reason, that no imaginable destructive sub-aerial agency 
 could produce a general wide-spread and uniform condition. 
 By what conceivable sub-aerial agency can this very thick 
 black cerate have been spread out as with a mighty trowel, 
 and fashioned to the surface over millions of square miles ? 
 If forests were destroyed to furnish it, how were they so 
 triturated and reduced to this black cement, that no chemist 
 could invent apparatus to produce such results, even in a 
 crucible ? 
 
 " I end, therefore, in believing that this black earth is 
 the last covering of mud and slime which was left by the 
 retirement of the Liassic sea, and was to a great extent 
 derived from the wearing away of the shales of the Jurassic 
 strata [sic]. 
 
 " If such are some of the difficulties of the Tchornaia-zem, 
 what are we to say of the great subjacent masses of clay 
 and sand of South Eussia ? In this we have not a pebble 
 of transport, nothing but a sort of clay or loam, which 
 might well pass for ' loess.' If so, and if ' loess ' was pro- 
 duced as Lyell thinks, then all South and Central Eussia 
 was one vast pond, in which all was tranquil during two 
 
i84i.] RETURN TO ST. PETERSBURG. 351 
 
 epochs 1st, that of the so-called drift, with mammoths ; 
 2d, that of the black earth." 
 
 By the beginning of October the various members of the 
 party, who had separated for the purpose of making different 
 traverses of the country, were once more brought together in 
 Moscow. There several days were spent by Murchison " in 
 condensing thoughts, comparing notes, examining Yon Key- 
 serling and Koksharoff, consulting with De Verneuil and all 
 the party, and preparing two general sections, a Tableau 
 Ge'ne'rale, the map, and the report of fourteen pages to Count 
 Caucrine on the results of the 'Expedition Ge*ologique.' Also 
 a letter was concocted to old Professor Fischer, for publication 
 in the Bulletin de Moscou and the German periodicals, giving 
 a slight sketch of our doings, and in which I first suggested 
 the term Permian." Petersburg was reached again on the 
 8th of October. 
 
 Of his last few days in Eussia the journal records the 
 following memoranda : " Having travelled 20,000 versts in 
 the distant provinces without losing a pin, we were twice 
 robbed between Novgorod and Moscow of our beds and 
 things behind the carriage. One trunk only was left in the 
 hinder parts, and this was viced on ; but besides this 
 security, I resolved to guard it from the station where we 
 detected our losses, and so letting down the head of the 
 caleche, I laid De Verneuil's double-barrelled gun over the 
 rear, and determined to bag the first thief who approached ; 
 and in this form we reached Madam Wilson's house. 
 Besides several interviews with the old minister, Count 
 Cancrine (who was much gratified with my report, of which 
 he had prepared a digest for the Emperor), and a dinner at 
 his house, and the same at Tcheffkine's, we were occupied 
 
352 SIR RODERICK MURCHISON. [mi. 
 
 in looking after more than twenty cases of fossils, which had 
 arrived from our distant parts, and were deposited in the 
 magazine of the School of Mines. 
 
 " All our reports and work being delivered in, official 
 letters were received announcing the Second Class St. 
 Anne in diamonds for myself, and a plain cross for De 
 Verneuil, as a mark of the Emperor's approbation of our 
 labours. 
 
 " We were to sail in the Nikolai steamer on Saturday the 
 24th, and Friday was fixed by the Emperor for seeing us 
 a great compliment, as it was His Majesty's working day 
 with his ministers. On these occasions Nicholas uses no 
 ceremony. After thanking us for taking so much pains 
 about the Ural Mountains, and after asking if I thought the 
 gold alluvia were likely to last much longer, he desired me 
 to open out and explain the rolls of drawing and paper 
 under my arm. This I did secundum artem. He was serious 
 when he was receiving his lesson about the productive and 
 non-productive tracts of coal, and the rationale thereof, and 
 laughing when he saw the Productus Cancrini and the 
 Goniatites Tcheffkini inscribed upon the roll, he asked, 
 ' Quel espece de produit est celui-la de mon ami le Comte ?' 
 'And so you have seen General Perovski? He is my 
 good and dear friend. I hope you were pleased with him ? ' 
 I had then to sing the praises, which I naturally did 
 con amore, of the frank and gallant soldier who had been so 
 truly kind, and also so very useful to us. 
 
 " When our geological talk was over, and he had asked 
 us about our health, our travels, and many special points, 
 I broached my desire to revisit Eussia in 1843, with my 
 work in my hand, and on that occasion to explore the Altai 
 
1841.] THE EMPEROR NICHOLAS I. 353 
 
 ' Come when you will/ was his reply, ' I shall always rejoice 
 to see you, and to afford you a hearty welcome; and be 
 assured that I am most particularly grateful for all your 
 exertions to impart knowledge amongst us whilst you are 
 studying the natural history of our country.' And then 
 with as hearty an ' au revoir/ and as warm a shaking of 
 hands as ever took place between the oldest familiar friends, 
 we took our leave. 
 
 " Such is Nicholas. Let those who criticise him look 
 into his noble and frank countenance, and then let them 
 try to tell me he is a tyrant. No ; utter ignorance of the 
 nature of the man has led to this most unjust notion. 
 Nicholas is above all deceit, and squares his conduct on 
 more noble principles than that of any potentate of modern 
 times. He disdains subterfuge, and is transparent as to 
 all his emotions. Hence if ill -served (knowing perfectly 
 what duty is) he does not suppress his feelings. He is 
 sometimes quick in his anger, but like all such generous 
 souls, his confidence in his friends is unbounded. Firm and 
 unchanging in his resolves as an Emperor of Russia must 
 be, if he desires to reign, his untiring aim is to ameliorate 
 every institution which he can touch. But alas ! so bound 
 up is everything in Eussia by forms, customs, and preju- 
 dices, that he who supposes the autocrat powerful for all 
 good, and capable of making every conceivable reform, 
 would find himself most egregiously mistaken. The nobles 
 and their privileges meet him here, the different bureau- 
 cracies there. Here the Minister of the State Demesnes 
 places a veto upon some great projected change ; there the 
 Minister of the Finances tells him such a thing cannot be, 
 or, in other words, cannot be paid for." 
 
 VOL. i. z 
 
354 S1E RODERICK MURCHISON. [mi. 
 
 The official courtesy and real kindness shown to Murclri- 
 son in the metropolis made the leave-taking more than a 
 matter of mere form. From one and all of his friends he 
 received the heartiest congratulations and good wishes, with 
 the expression of a hope for his speedy return. He notes, 
 for instance, that Count Cancrine, the virtual Prime Minister 
 of the Empire, " embraced us, kissing me three times ; and 
 thus encouraged with every promise if I would return, we 
 took our leave." 
 
 In spite of fogs and other delays, including a feverish 
 attack, the result of the last week of excitement and 
 conviviality in St. Petersburg, our traveller reached the 
 mouth of the Humber on the 1st November. The last 
 record in the Eussian journal, written while the vessel was 
 within a few miles of the Yorkshire coast, is as follows : 
 
 " Seven months and seven days have now elapsed since 
 I left my home on a fine day in the end of March, and I 
 hail Old England with a shining sun again after having 
 travelled through space equal to the diameter of the earth. 
 The Kirghis, the Kalmuck, and the Bashkir excitements 
 are now to give way to plain English comforts, of which 
 I have neither tasted nor thought since I bade adieu to 
 them." 
 
 Thus ended Murchison's Eussian campaign. The ample 
 record which is given in the great work by his colleagues 
 and himself has made the general scientific results long 
 familiar to geologists. The geological structure of the 
 Eussian provinces was now for the first time broadly 
 sketched out and mapped so as to bring the rocks of one 
 half of the European continent into family relationship with 
 those of the other half. Nor were the benefits conferred 
 
1841.] RESULTS OF RUSSIAN CAMPAIGN. 355 
 
 only on the country in which the long and arduous journey 
 had been made. New light was thrown on questions of 
 general geological import, such as the structure of moun- 
 tains, the physical geography of the times of the Old Eed 
 Sandstone, the classification of the Devonian and Old Red 
 Sandstone rocks of Western Europe, the history of the earlier 
 part of the Carboniferous period, the true order and relations 
 of the red rocks lying between the Coal-measures and the 
 base of the Jurassic series, the former extension of that 
 ancient sea of which the modern Caspian and Sea of Aral 
 are but the diminishing fragments, the southern extension 
 of the ice-borne boulders carried during the Ice Age from 
 Finland and the north far into the low plains of Europe, 
 the occurrence of gold and its distribution in the old alluvia 
 of rivers. The campaign indeed proved to be most fruitful 
 in its issues. It raised Murchison to the same place with 
 regard to the geology of Eussia that Pallas fills in its 
 botany. 1 It opened out a new field for research, and paved 
 the way for the good work which has since been done in 
 
 Eussia by other and later observers. 
 J 
 
 On Murchison himself its influence was profound. It 
 gave breadth to his method of dealing with palaeozoic rocks ; 
 it increased his aptitude in applying the evidence of fossils 
 to determine questions of geological chronology, and it 
 strengthened his confidence in his Silurian and Devonian 
 work, and in the principles on which that work had been 
 based. Bringing him too into constant and intimate 
 association with foreigners and foreign ways of life and 
 thought, the Eussian campaign increased in a high degree 
 
 1 Helmersen, Bulletin de VAcad. Imp. de St. Petersbourg, torn. xvii. 
 1871, p. 295 et seq. 
 
356 SIR RODERICK MURCHISON. [mi. 
 
 his sympathy and respect for men and things abroad, 
 removed from him much, if not all, of that insularity of 
 feeling of which his countrymen are so often accused, and 
 made him more than ever the considerate friend and cour- 
 teous host of all scientific brethren whose lot brought them 
 to this country, no matter from what quarter of the globe 
 they might come. 
 
 Whether the influences of this bold and skilfully con- 
 ducted journey were altogether beneficial may be matter 
 for doubt. In the course of a few months the geological 
 structure of a vast empire embracing the greater part of 
 Europe had been sketched out a feat to which there had 
 probably been no parallel in the annals of geological 
 exploration. The success of the campaign and the applause 
 which that success brought from all quarters, were so great 
 that a more than usually well-balanced nature might well 
 have felt the strain too severe to keep its equipoise. From 
 this time forward characteristics which may be traced in 
 the foregoing narrative became more strongly developed in 
 Murchison's character. In his letters and in his published 
 writings his own labours fill a larger and larger space. His 
 friends could trace an increasing impatience of opposition or 
 contradiction in scientific matters, a growing tendency to 
 discover in the work of other fellow-labourers a want of due 
 recognition on their part of what had been done by him, 
 a habit, which became more and more confirmed, of speaking 
 of the researches of his contemporaries, specially of younger 
 men, in a sort of patronizing or condescending way. He 
 had hitherto been, as it were, one of the captains of a regi- 
 ment ; he now felt himself entitled to assume the authority 
 of a general of division. To many men who did not know 
 
1841.] INFLUENCE OF SUCCESS. 357 
 
 him, or who knew him only slightly, this tendency assumed 
 an air of arrogance, and was resented as an unwarranted 
 assumption of superiority. But they who knew Murchison 
 well, and had occasion to see him in many different lights, 
 will doubtless admit that these failings were in large measure 
 those of manner, and at the most lay openly on the sur- 
 face of his character. You saw some of them at once, 
 almost before you saw anything else. Hence it was natural 
 enough that casual intercourse with him should give 
 the impression of a man altogether wrapt up in his own 
 work and fame. Yet underneath those outer and rather 
 forbidding peculiarities lay a generous and sympathetic 
 nature which inspired many an act of unsolicited and 
 unexpected kindness, and which was known to refuse to 
 be alienated even after the deepest ingratitude. The suc- 
 cess of the Eussian researches probably quickened into 
 undue prominence some of the less pleasing features in 
 Murchison's character, but they in no way lessened the 
 measure of kindly interest and sympathy which, in spite of 
 the way he often chose to show them, were those of a true 
 friend. 
 
CHAPTEE XVI. 
 
 THE CHAIR OF THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 
 
 WITH the prestige which the Eussian geological tour had 
 given him all over Europe, Murchison returned to resume 
 his town life in London. There lay a vast amount of work 
 before him to be done this winter (1841-2). First of all 
 the notes of the explorations in Eussia had to be carefully 
 worked out in anticipation of the visit which it had been 
 arranged should be paid to him by his fellow-travellers, 
 with the view of settling their plans for the preparation of 
 their conjoint volumes on the geology of the Muscovite 
 dominions. The experience which the writing of the 
 Silurian System had furnished warned him that his new 
 literary venture would be no easy task ; we shall find, 
 indeed, that just as in the case of the growth of that work, 
 so in the elaboration of Russia and the Ural Mountains, the 
 progress of his pen, slow enough of itself, needed to be con- 
 tinually sustained by fresh arguments with the hammer. 
 Only now, the intervals of field-work, instead of taking the 
 geologist to old haunts, social and scientific, in Wales and 
 the Border counties, led him to wide digressions into Scan- 
 dinavia, France, Germany, Poland, Eussia in short, into 
 many far separated tracts of the Continent, whence fresh 
 evidence could be gathered bearing on what had come to 
 
1841-2.] TOWN LIFE. 359 
 
 be his great geological quest the true order and classifica- 
 tion of the older fossiliferous rocks of Europe. 
 
 But besides this main piece of work, he had now to 
 take his place and perform personally the duties of Presi- 
 dent of the Geological Society, an office to which, as we 
 have seen, he had been for the second time elected, just 
 before he started on his second journey to Eussia. Since 
 he had previously filled the chair he had vastly increased 
 his reputation. Moreover, the fortune inherited by Mrs. 
 Murchison had very considerably augmented his income ; 
 hence, while eager to sustain his position with dignity 
 and hospitality, he found himself much more able to do 
 so on a large scale than in the old and more modest days 
 at Bryanston Place. 
 
 Add to these various avocations the numerous and 
 exacting calls upon the time and thought of a man who 
 occupies a prominent place in London society calls which, 
 though now increasing enormously on Murchison's hands, 
 he yet strove to meet as far as he could and we see what 
 the change must have been from the wilds of the Urals to 
 the turmoil of London. 
 
 The narrative now to be followed will lead us through 
 the doings of the busy years which culminated in the pub- 
 lication of the work on Eussia. It was during that time 
 that the classification developed in the Silurian System 
 received its broad basis in Europe. In that time, too, the 
 seeds began to germinate of the estrangement which utterly 
 destroyed the ancient brotherly friendship between Sedgwick 
 and Murchison. There is thus a special interest attaching 
 to this period in relation both to Murchison's life and to the 
 progress of palaeozoic geology. 
 
360 SIR RODERICK MURCHISON. [im 
 
 The following letter takes us at once into the midst of 
 the work and play of the winter : 
 
 "16 BELGKAVE SQUAB E, January 25th, 1842. 
 
 "DEAR EGERTON, My ancient sympathies are not so 
 entirely destroyed that I do not feel for your loss of twenty- 
 five couple of good hounds ! and the only compensation is, 
 that we have a chance of seeing more of yourself. Humboldt 
 declines the proposed festival, thanking me for the offer of 
 this ' noble mark of English kindness/ but as the King stays 
 only eight or nine days, and has nine thousand things to do, 
 the thing was impracticable. 1 Last week I was at Beaudesert 
 trying to shoot in snow, but not prevented during two days 
 fro'm geologizing the fine high wilds of Cannock Chase among 
 the old Marquis's blackcocks, grouse, and big boulder- stones. 
 Then I went to Lord Dartmouth's, where I met a large party 
 and read an inaugural address to the Midland Geological 
 Society, and made five speeches after dinner (Lord Ward in 
 the chair) to all the ironmasters, the most effective hit being 
 when, in the absence of other fighting men, I stood up for 
 the army and navy, and talked of a withered laurel or two 
 which I picked up under the ' Old Duke.' That name was 
 a talisman among good loyal folks like the Dudleyites. 
 
 " I shall see Humboldt, I hope, chez moi one of these days, 
 but the devil is that I am losing the best shooting of the 
 year. I shall read all my discourse 2 this year at the morning 
 meeting, so that we may have a real jollification at the 
 Crown and Anchor, after which I fear I shall scarcely be 
 able to face the Earl's symposium." 
 
 1 The King of Prussia was then on a visit to England, with Humboldt 
 as one of his suite. 
 
 2 The President's address at the anniversary of the Geological Society 
 in February. 
 
SYDNEY SMITH'S ORANGERY. 361 
 
 Before the end of the year the inaugural address men- 
 tioned in this letter had been printed and circulated among 
 his friends. From one of these, the facetious Sydney Smith, 
 he received the subjoined acknowledgment : 
 
 " DEAR MURCHISON, Many thanks for your yellow book, 
 which is just come down to me. You have gained great 
 fame, and I am very glad of it ; had it been in theology, I 
 should have been your rival, and probably have been jealous 
 of you, but as it is in geology, my benevolence and real good- 
 will towards you have fair play. 
 
 " I shall read you out loud to-day. Heaven send I may 
 understand you : not that I suspect your perspicuity, but 
 that my knowledge of your science is too slender for that 
 advantage a knowledge which just enables me to distin- 
 guish between the Caseous and the Cretaceous formations, 
 or, as the vulgar have it, to know chalk from cheese. 
 
 " There are no people here, and no events, so I have no 
 news to tell you, except that in this mild climate my orange- 
 trees are now out of doors, and in full bearing. Immediately 
 before my windows, there are twelve large oranges on one 
 tree. The trees themselves are not correctly the Linnean 
 orange-tree, but what are popularly called the bay tree, in 
 large green boxes of the most correct shape, and the oranges 
 well secured with the best pack-thread. They are uni- 
 versally admired, and, upon the whole, considered finer 
 than the Ludovican orange-trees of Versailles. Best regards 
 to Mrs. M. Yours, my dear Murchison, very truly, 
 
 " SYDNEY SMITH. 
 
 " TAUNTON, December 26, 1841." 
 
 Two other letters of the same correspondent, called forth 
 
362 SIR RODERICK MURCHISON. [i842. 
 
 by similar presents of copies of Murchison's memoirs and 
 addresses, may be given here : 
 
 " DEAR MURCHISON, Many thanks for your kind recol- 
 lection of me in sending me your pamphlet, which I shall 
 read with all attention and care. My observation has neces- 
 sarily been so much fixed on missions of another description, 
 that I am hardly reconciled to zealots going out with voltaic 
 batteries and crucibles for the conversion of mankind, and 
 baptizing their fellow- creatures with the mineral acids ; but 
 I will endeavour to admire and believe in you. 1 
 
 " My real alarm for you is, that by some late decisions 
 of the magistrates, you come under the legal definition of 
 Strollers, and nothing could give me more pain than to see 
 any of the Sections upon the Mill calculating the resistance 
 of the air, and showing the additional quantity of flour 
 which might be ground in vacua each man in the mean- 
 time imagining himself a Galileo. We have had Mrs. Grote 
 here : Grotius would not come. The basis of her character 
 is rural, and she was intended for a country clergyman's 
 wife ; but for whatever she was intended, she is an extra- 
 ordinary clever woman, and we all liked her very much. 
 
 " Mrs. Sydney has eight distinct illnesses, and I have 
 nine. We take something every hour, and pass the mixture 
 from one to the other, as Mrs. M. and you do the bottle. 
 
 "About forty years ago I stopped an infant in Lord 
 Breadalbane's ground, and patted his face ; the nurse said, 
 ' Hold up your head, Lord Glenorchy.' This was the Presi- 
 dent of your Society ; he seems to be acting an honourable 
 and enlightened part in life ; pray present my respects to 
 
 1 Reference is here made to the proceedings of the British Association. 
 Lord Breadalbane was President in 1840. 
 
A GEOLOGICAL PARADISE. 363 
 
 him and his beautiful Countess. Yours, my dear Murchison, 
 very truly, SYDNEY SMITH." 
 
 "DEAR MURCHISON, Many thanks for your address, 
 which I shall diligently read. May there not be some one 
 among the infinite worlds where men and women are all 
 made of stone perhaps of Parian marble ? How infinitely 
 superior to flesh and blood ! and what a paradise for you, to 
 pass eternity with a Greywacke Woman ! ! ! Ever yours, 
 
 " SYDNEY SMITH." 
 
 The anniversary address given to the Geological Society 
 in February 1842 was a laboured production, occupying 
 forty of the closely printed pages of the Society's Pro- 
 ceedings, and must have somewhat exhausted both reader 
 and audience from its mere length. During the interval 
 of ten years which had passed away since Murchison 
 read a similar discourse, his favourite science had in 
 some departments made rapid strides ; but in none had 
 its progress been so remarkable as in the classification of 
 the older fossiliferous rocks, a result which sprang in great 
 measure out of his own labours. Naturally therefore he 
 dwells upon his share in the triumphal progress of geo- 
 logy. Giving his brethren of the hammer a sketch of 
 the steps by which the classification had been worked 
 out, he alludes to his adoption of the term " Silurian," re- 
 marking that he had some pride in restoring that name to 
 currency in remembrance of the boast of the Roman general 
 Ostorius, who, on conquering Caractacus, declared that he 
 had blotted out the very name of the British Silures from 
 the face of the earth. He justifies the use of a geographical 
 terminology, and very pointedly calls attention to the 
 
364 SIR RODERICK MURCHISON. [im. 
 
 absence of any zoological boundary between the Cambrian 
 and Silurian systems, a fact which had already been ad- 
 mitted by Sedgwick. 1 He gathers together with manifest 
 satisfaction the evidence of the extension of the Silurian 
 system in Europe, Africa, America, Australia, and the South 
 Seas. The Geological Survey had been making progress in 
 South Wales, and had begun to grapple with the problem 
 as to the separation between Cambria and Siluria. While 
 alluding to its progress under the leadership of De la Beche, 
 Murchison refers again to the work of the Survey in Devon- 
 shire, and to his own labours there and on the Continent in 
 conjunction with Sedgwick. The rocks of Devonshire lead 
 him to say a few kindly words of Hugh Miller's Old Red 
 Sandstone, which had recently appeared, and to speak of 
 the wonderful series of bone-cased uncouth fishes furnished 
 by the Old Red Sandstone of Scotland and Russia. Among 
 his allusions to fossils there occurs a reference to the re- 
 markable announcement by Ehrenberg of the occurrence of 
 still living species in the Cretaceous rocks, a fact which 
 showed " the danger of as yet attempting to establish a 
 
 1 Proc. Geol. Soc., iii. 641. The principle on which Murchison had 
 proceeded in his Silurian classification was that which had guided Wil- 
 liam Smith among the Secondary rocks "Strata identified by their 
 organic remains." If, therefore, he found a series of strata containing 
 nothing but Silurian fossils, he was logically bound to class it as Silurian. 
 This was the inevitable step in store for him, and that he saw it coming 
 seems to be indicated in this address. He says that " the term ' Cam- 
 brian' must cease to be used in zoological classification, it being in that 
 sense synonymous with ' Lower Silurian,' " and adds that the line of divi- 
 sion placed on his map between the two series has no longer any pakeon- 
 tological significance. He hints that the Cambrian series is but a local 
 subdivision of the same great palaeozoic group. Sedgwick's suscep- 
 tibilities do not seem to have been roused at this time, but the subse- 
 quent perusal of this address and that for the next year led him to protest 
 against the proposal to wipe out the Cambrian system from geological 
 nomenclature. See Sedgwick'a Letters to Wordsworth, Letter V. p. 86, 
 and postea, p. 380, note. 
 
1842.] THE GEOLOGICAL ANNIVERSARY. 365 
 
 nomenclature founded solely on the fauna and flora of 
 former conditions of the planet." After eulogies of foreign 
 geologists, and notably of L. von Buch, to whom he con- 
 veyed the Society's Wollaston medal, he winds up his oration 
 with a long disquisition on the glacial theories which had 
 "been discussed at Glasgow, and regarding which he had 
 then announced his intention " to show fight." He refuses 
 to allow Agassiz to cover the northern parts of our hemi- 
 sphere with sheets of ice, but admits that the evidence com- 
 pels him to concede that the land was submerged beneath 
 an ocean over which ice-rafts and icebergs sailed southwards. 
 
 Here is Murchison's own report of his discourse and 
 the meeting, as sent at the time to Sedgwick : 
 
 26th February 1842. "The anniversary went off glori- 
 ously, though I say so. The morning discourse was well 
 received, and in truth I put a deal of powder and shot into it, 
 foreign and domestic, and took so much pains as to stop my 
 original work on Russia. ... [I write] as well as a man can 
 whose first soiree begins to-night with probably 200 or 300 
 people coming ! The morning room was full, and I read for 
 two hours without losing a man. I entered at length into 
 the Silurian and ' Palaeozoic' question. ... I defended the 
 temporary division set up between your lower slaty rocks and 
 my superior groups on the ground of positive observation of 
 infraposition, and if in the end (as I now firmly believe) no 
 suite of organic remains will be found, even in the lowest 
 depths, which differs on the whole from the Silurian types, 
 why then we prove the curious law that in the earliest 
 inhabited seas of our planet the same forms were long con- 
 tinued. 
 
 " I took care to show that any other plan than that 
 
366 SIR RODERICK MURCHISON. [im. 
 
 which we adopted would have led to fatal errors, such as 
 ' Systeme Hercynien ' and other hypotheses, and that now 
 all must come right, to whatever extent (and the extent can 
 probably never be defined) the base of the Lower Silurian 
 zoological type may be extended. . . . 
 
 " Our dinner went off ' con amore,' and every one says 
 it was the best (Adam Sedgwick only wanted) which we 
 ever had. I did my best to make it of a public character, 
 and had my two Knights of the Garter, one on either side 
 the President, and the representative of my Emperor 
 Nicholas. Brunnow spoke admirably, and I never heard 
 Lord Lansdowne speak so well as for the toast of ' The 
 Universities of this Land.' . . . Having no science to go 
 to and snore over at night, the ccena, et nox went off just as 
 I could have wished it, and I so handicapped my running 
 horses that they each made play where I wanted it. I 
 send you a scrap from the Morning Post, possibly written 
 by . . . Knowing that he was going to furnish some- 
 thing, I popped my speech [about the Emperor and Baron 
 Brunnow] into his hands, being well aware that words are 
 weighed at St. Petersburg. Tell Whewell of our frolics." 
 
 Among the survivors of that small band of enthusiasts 
 who founded the Geological Society, one of the most promi- 
 nent still took, even in his old age, a keen interest in the 
 Society's affairs. No face was more familiar at the meet- 
 ings than that of G. B. Greenough, no voice more often 
 heard in the discussions. Every new theory, or proposed 
 reform of an old one, every suggested change in the estab- 
 lished nomenclature of geology, was sure to receive keen 
 scrutiny, and probably more or less of active or at least 
 passive opposition, from the veteran President of the Society. 
 
1842.] G. B. GREENOUGH. 367 
 
 He used even to astonish the propounder of some novelty 
 by demonstrating, or at least endeavouring to demonstrate, 
 that what was thought to be new was really only another 
 version of what had been known long before, had perhaps 
 been even taught by "Werner himself. We have seen that 
 this happened to be his mood of opposition when the 
 Devonian question came up for discussion before the Society. 
 And yet with this adherence to his early habits of thought, 
 and with a doggedness of opposition which, though always 
 courteous and good-natured, must often have been provoking 
 enough, Greenough retained the deep respect and esteem of 
 every member of the Society. This was manifested now 
 by a movement to perpetuate his features in a bust, to be 
 placed and preserved in the apartments at Somerset House. 1 
 Murchison took a leading share in the organization of this 
 scheme, which when propounded to Greenough drew from him 
 the following acknowledgment, addressed to Murchison : 
 March 30, 1842. "For the exertions I have made in 
 behalf of the Geological Society I have been most liberally 
 remunerated by the confidence reposed in me at all times 
 by the body at large, and by the invaluable friendships 
 which I have formed with many of the members. I accept, 
 however, with much pleasure, the distinction now presented 
 to me, viewing it, as I do, not merely as an acknowledgment 
 that I have faithfully discharged my duty, but also as a 
 stimulant to exertion in others, and above all as a guaran- 
 tee that those principles which, in the infancy of our estab- 
 lishment, were resolutely insisted upon as essential to 
 the well-being of every scientific institution, will continue 
 to be cherished in the Geological Society, not only in the 
 
 1 It was intrusted to Westmacott. 
 
368 SIR RODERICK MURCHISON. [is42. 
 
 lifetime of its founders, but long after their decease. 
 Yours sincerely, G. B. GREENOUGH." 
 
 Whilst the geologists of Britain were in this graceful 
 way crowning with honour the latter days of one of their 
 earliest fellow-workers, another member of the brother- 
 hood of hammerers was about to begin a career which has 
 gained for him a high place in the annals of geological dis- 
 covery, and with both of these events Murchison was 
 intimately associated. The Provincial Legislature of Canada 
 had voted a sum of 1500 for a geological survey of the 
 province. With the view of securing a competent person 
 to undertake the duties of such a survey, the Governor- 
 General applied to the Home Government, mentioning in 
 particular the name of Mr. W. E. Logan, and requesting 
 Lord Stanley to ascertain whether, in the opinion of the 
 Geological Society of London, or other competent authori- 
 ties, he was considered to be qualified. This official request 
 was communicated to Murchison, as President of the Society. 
 Mr. Logan had already distinguished himself by some 
 admirable surveys of the South Welsh coal-fields, and by 
 observations on the formation of coal. He had worked 
 enthusiastically as a volunteer in De la Beche's staff of the 
 Geological Survey, and his large sections, drawn to a true 
 scale of six inches to a mile, led to all the subsequent admir- 
 able sections by De la Beche and his colleagues. Murchison, 
 who knew these labours well, and had made use of them in 
 his Silurian map, recommended the proposed appointment in 
 the warmest terms, adding that it would " render essential 
 service to Canada, and materially favour the advancement 
 of geological inquiry." Shortly afterwards Mr. Logan re- 
 
1842.] VON KEYSERLING IN ENGLAND. 369 
 
 ceived the appointment, and returned to Canada, his native 
 country, to lay the foundations, and for about thirty years, 
 in spite of many discouragements, to work out the develop- 
 ment of one of the most important and successful geologi- 
 cal surveys that have ever been carried on in any country. 
 
 Summer had brought back leaf and blossom ere bags 
 and hammers were furbished up anew for field-work. A 
 plan which had been discussed the previous year in Eussia 
 was now to be put into execution, viz., that Murchison should 
 with his comrades make a careful examination of some of 
 the best sections of the older rocks of Britain, for the sake 
 of renewed and more definite comparison with those of the 
 Continent, and especially of Eussia. Count Von Keyserling 
 duly arrived, and after the usual and indispensable hospi- 
 talities in London, Murchison and he started on their Eng- 
 lish tour. Beginning with the Isle of Wight, they first 
 worked their way over the Secondary formations westward 
 as far as Cheltenham and the Malverns. Then they turned 
 northwards into the old Silurian region, lingering at the 
 rocks and country-houses which had been Murchison's 
 favourite haunts ten years before, and passing across the 
 undefined and increasingly indefinable line between Cam- 
 bria and Siluria, away over Sedgwick's domains even to the 
 far promontories of North Wales. Turning still north- 
 wards, the two geologists halted in Durham to compare the 
 rocks and fossils of that county with those of the Eussian 
 province whence the term ' Permian' had been taken. The 
 northern coal-fields, so like in some respects to those of 
 Eussia, offered many points of interest for comparison. So 
 intent, however, were the travellers in gathering materials 
 for the illustration of their Eussian work, that they pro- 
 
 VOL. I. 2 A 
 
370 SIR RODERICK MURCHISON'. [i842. 
 
 longed their journey into Scotland, tracing the red sand- 
 stones which emerge from under the coal-bearing tracts, and 
 in which they saw much to remind them of the great areas 
 of Old Eed Sandstone in Eussia. Crossing to Carlisle on 
 their southward journey, they worked their way through the 
 Lake district, thence down the great Carboniferous Limestone 
 tracts of Yorkshire and Derbyshire into the Staffordshire 
 coal-field until they once more found themselves on the 
 slopes of the Malverns. 
 
 Such was the round of country examined. One or two 
 parts of the journey deserve notice from the sequel to which 
 they led. In the course of their traverse from the Silurian 
 into the Cambrian region, the travellers were as unable 
 as anybody had ever yet been to draw any satisfactory line 
 between the two tracts. Mineralogically there was really no 
 true boundary line, and zoologically it had been agreed even 
 by Sedgwick himself that no distinct assemblage of fossils 
 had been ascertained to belong to the Cambrian series. 
 
 The Geological Survey under De la Beche had now been 
 extended into Wales. When Murchison and Von Keyserling 
 were on their tour, the Survey forces were at work among 
 the Silurian and Cambrian strata, and had already, after 
 much careful mapping, made out some important points 
 regarding the relation of these strata. Some of these are 
 referred to in the following extracts from a letter by De la 
 Beche to Murchison. Llandovery, Zlst July 1842. "Touch- 
 ing the Silurian system, heaven knows where it is to end 
 northwards in this land ! it goes in great rolls, and no mis- 
 take, a long way beyond the Caermarthen (Ordnance map) 
 sheet. No want of fossils ; in fact, organics and sections 
 all going to prove the same thing. The cleavage no doubt 
 
1842.] THE GEOLOGICAL SURVEY IN CAMBRIA. 371 
 
 is abominable, but by very careful hunting of all the natural 
 sections, and giving lots of time to it, the affair has at last 
 come out clear enough. ... It would be a long story to go 
 further into the old story hereabouts; that your Silurian 
 system must have a jolly extension at our hands over the 
 rocks of this land seems certain." 
 
 The extension referred to was mainly due to the labours 
 of Mr. Eamsay, who, since he left for Tenby, had been hard 
 at work among the Welsh rocks. On the 7th August of this 
 same year he reported progress to Murchison as follows : " I 
 have gradually gone over the whole of the ci-devant Cam- 
 brians between St. David's and Llandovery, and I can 
 clearly show, particularly since I came here [Pumsant], 
 that all your rocks, under a somewhat different form, spread 
 over the surface of the land at least as far as Cardigan. . . . 
 I should much like to show you some of the evidences of 
 this Cambrian revolution." 
 
 These were important labours in the progress of British 
 geology ; but their special interest in the present narrative 
 lies in their relation to Murchison and his views. It will 
 be seen that they confirmed his belief in the extension of 
 the Silurian forms of life among the older rocks, and they 
 no doubt contributed not a little to foster that spirit of con- 
 fident assertion which marked his next oration to the Geo- 
 logical Society. He counted as personal friends the men 
 by whom these researches had been conducted, but until 
 this summer, when he took Count Von Keyserling with him, 
 he had not become acquainted with the way in which their 
 actual work in the Geological Survey was carried on. 
 Phillips was then busy " running a section " across the Mal- 
 verns. So Murchison and his Eussian companion went 
 
372 SIR RODERICK MURCHISON. [iw. 
 
 round to see. They found their friend, on a bright Sep- 
 tember morning, on the summit of the Beacon, busy with 
 his theodolite, and learnt something of the laborious detail 
 of geological surveying, so different from the hop-step-and- 
 jump kind of work with which their Eussian experiences 
 had familiarized them. 
 
 An important change took place this autumn in the 
 Geological Society. Lonsdale, feeling the growing weakness 
 of his health, and the increasing urgency of the calls of the 
 Society upon his powers, had resigned his Curatorship, with 
 the purpose of seeking rest in retirement. As Murchison 
 had been the means of bringing him to London, and had 
 enjoyed his close friendship, as well as the quite invaluable 
 aid which Lonsdale cheerfully rendered in palseontological 
 and other matters, he now took an active part in promoting 
 the subscription for a testimonial to the worthy Curator, 
 expressive of the universal regret at his retirement. A silver 
 cup, together with a sum of 600, were presented by Mur- 
 chison and Fitton, in name of the subscribers, to Lonsdale, 
 who, unable at the time to find a vent for his feelings, sent 
 a characteristically modest and grateful note to Murchison. 
 " Should life be granted me," he said, " I purpose to pursue 
 the study of fossil polyparies, and it will be a source of per- 
 sonal gratification if my friends will transmit to me any speci- 
 mens they may think me capable of examining, and for the 
 means of conducting this inquiry I shall be indebted to them." 
 
 For fourteen years Lonsdale had been in the midst of 
 all the activity of the Geological Society. During that time 
 not a publication had been issued by the Society which did 
 not owe much to his careful supervision. But the official 
 work which he performed so well, and which undoubtedly 
 
1842.] RETIREMENT OF LONDSDALE. 373 
 
 had no small influence on the general progress of geology in 
 England, represented only a part, and perhaps not even the 
 chief part, of the obligations under which he placed the 
 members of the Society. There were few of the geologists 
 engaged, like Murchison, in active research and in inde- 
 pendent publication, who had not recourse to Lonsdale as an 
 ever ready and sagacious helper. In a body of men who, 
 busy with the same pursuits, are always necessarily to some 
 extent rivals, there must needs arise ever and anon occasions 
 when unwarranted assertions on one side are met by more 
 or less angry recrimination on the other, and when the truth 
 of the question in dispute becomes clouded by the per- 
 sonalities of the disputants. Such cases, despite the glow- 
 ing eulogiums in presidential addresses, were not unknown 
 in the Geological Society. Lonsdale's perfect impartiality 
 and candour, and his tact and shrewd sense, enabled him 
 to moderate these ebullitions, and to preserve the harmony 
 of the brotherhood. 
 
 Though he now retired from Somerset House, he could 
 not so easily wean himself from the Society and the pur- 
 suits of its members, with whom he had been so long and 
 so intimately associated. He went down to Dartmouth to 
 enjoy pure air and give himself up to the unremitting study 
 of his favourite branch of inquiry, the structure of fossil 
 corals. But we find him carrying on still, as of old, a 
 voluminous correspondence with the President on affairs of 
 finance, the preparation of the Society's Transactions, the 
 choice of office-bearers, and other matters of business, be- 
 sides the more strictly scientific subjects on which they 
 were both engaged. 
 
 Lonsdale's resignation brought into the service of the 
 
374 SIR RODERICK MURCHISON. [i842. 
 
 Society, and prominently into geological pursuits, another 
 naturalist of greater knowledge and wider fame. When the 
 Curator's determination to leave came to be known, various 
 names were talked about in reference to the supplying 
 of his vacant post, among them that of Hugh Miller. 
 But, after some delay, the final decision among nine can- 
 didates was made in favour of Edward Forbes, who had 
 recently been chosen Professor of Botany in King's Col- 
 lege, and whose brilliant researches in the ^Egean gave 
 promise of a distinguished career as a naturalist and palae- 
 ontologist. 
 
 The appointment of Forbes to be Curator of the Geo- 
 logical Society must be regarded as an event of considerable 
 importance in the history of geological progress in Britain. 
 While still an enthusiastic student of natural history under 
 Jameson at Edinburgh, he had struck out into that little- 
 trodden path of research in zoological and botanical distri- 
 bution wherein he continued to be throughout his too short 
 life the great pioneer. Already, by excursions in this 
 country, in Scandinavia, and in Switzerland, he had been 
 led to recognise the connexion between geological changes 
 and the present grouping of plants and animals'. For- 
 tunately provided with further and more advantageous 
 opportunities of concentrated research, by being attached to 
 Captain Graves's surveying ship in the -ZEgean Sea, he had 
 thrown quite a fresh light on the way in which the pro- 
 secution of zoological research might be made subservient 
 to the elucidation of some of the most interesting questions 
 in geology, such as the history of existing species of animals 
 and the geographical changes of which they have been the 
 witnesses. By "these bold and original investigations he 
 
1842.] EDWARD FORBES. 375 
 
 had in a special manner attracted the notice of geologists. 1 
 And now that his duties at Somerset House brought him 
 into direct relationship with the leaders of geological inquiry 
 in Britain, his subsequent scientific work took thencefor- 
 ward a more decidedly geological aspect. 
 
 It is not, however, in his relations to the general pro- 
 gress of the science, but in his connexion with the more 
 limited field of palaeozoic geology, that the advent and work 
 of Edward Forbes require notice here. His position as 
 Curator at Somerset House undoubtedly led directly to his 
 subsequent appointment as naturalist to the Geological 
 Survey, 2 to the admirable arrangement of the palseontological 
 collections placed under his charge in the Jermyn Street 
 Museum, and to the good service which he rendered in 
 working out the natural history of Silurian and Tertiary 
 rocks. It brought him also into intimate personal relations 
 with Murchison, De la Beche, Ramsay, and the others 
 on whom the progress of palaeozoic geology in this country 
 mainly depended. 
 
 The winter of 1842-3 was with Murchison a very busy 
 one. It was to be his last season of office as President of 
 the geologists, and besides the proper official duties, which 
 he conscientiously discharged, he entered with renewed zest 
 
 into the social festivities for which the Belgrave Square 
 
 * 
 
 mansion had now become well known. There were few 
 men of note in literature, politics, science, or art to whom 
 
 1 In 1841 he had received from the Geological Society the balance of 
 the Wollaston fund, amounting to 30, to assist him in carrying on his 
 researches. 
 
 2 The actual proposal of Forbes to De la Beche for employment in the 
 Survey was made by Mr. A. C. Ramsay, who had known the young 
 naturalist well since 1840. 
 
376 SIR RODERICK MURCHISON. \iw. 
 
 the soirees of the President of the Geological Society were 
 not, or might not have been, familiar. 
 
 At the anniversary in February, when he would resign 
 office, he had determined to give an address to the Society 
 containing a detailed report of progress, and in particular a 
 more pointed statement of his position with regard to the 
 impending changes in Cambrian and Silurian nomenclature. 
 How he meant to proceed is shown in the subjoined letter 
 of 16th October: 
 
 " MY DEAK SEDGWICK, On the 1st of next month I go 
 to press with the work on Eussia, which with amplifications 
 and emendations is composed of the memoir referred to you 
 last year, and two which I have read since on other parts of 
 Muscovy and on the Ural Mountains. The country is described 
 in ascending order, and I therefore must cast my Silurian 
 chapter at once into type, with a preamble on ' Palaeozoic 
 rocks,' which shall render my views intelligible to the 
 Eussians, for whom the work is hereafter to be translated. 
 In doing this I necessarily give a little sketch of our own 
 operations in the British Isles and in the Ehenish Pro- 
 vinces, and then go on to show how Eussia completes the 
 proofs desired, and confirms our views. Now in effecting 
 this to my satisfaction, I wish to have your own authority 
 to speak out concerning the Cambrian rocks zoologically 
 considered. You know as well as myself that on those 
 parts of the Continent which we have seen together, there 
 is but one type of fossil remains beneath an unquestionable 
 Devonian zone, and that we have called Silurian. The 
 same is still more clearly exhibited in Eussia in the lime- 
 stones, sandstone, and shale, which lie beneath true Old Eed 
 Sandstone, filled both with fishes of Scotland and shells 
 
1842.] CAMBRIAN AND SILURIAN. 377 
 
 of Devon. The Silurian rocks of Eussia, Gothland, and 
 Sweden rest at once on the crystalline slates of the north. 
 The same succession has been recently established (zoologi- 
 cally) in Brittany by Verneuil and d'Archiac this summer, 
 though there they have inferior slaty rocks without fossils 
 unconformable to Caradoc sandstone. Whilst these in- 
 quiries have been deciding the zoological succession on the 
 Continent, and extending it even into Asia, our own region 
 at home has been silent. I was rejoiced therefore when I 
 knew you had been again into North Wales, and that you 
 had taken young Salter with you, because you could then 
 make up your mind to put your oracle out, without having 
 it trumpeted forth by others. 
 
 " In the meantime, besides what Mr. Maclauchlan stated 
 in respect to Pembrokeshire, De la Beche and his workmen 
 assure me, that the whole of that tract is nothing more than 
 Caradoc sandstone and Llandeilo flag, or Lower Silurian, 
 folded over and over in troughs, and exceedingly altered 
 by intrusive rocks and changed by crystallization and cleav- 
 age. They contend also that the very same identical fossils, 
 in the very same strata as those which I have described and 
 figured as Lower Silurian at Noeth Griig, north of Llan- 
 dovery (and only a few miles from the Old Eed escarpment), 
 are repeated over and over, up to the sea-coast at Cardigan, 
 and to the north of it. To this I cannot say nay, because 
 in my work I have described descending passages into 
 what I certainly conceived, without perhaps sufficient exami- 
 nation, to be a great inferior slaty mass, and in which I 
 never observed the fossils in question. If their position is 
 true it would be in vain to contend for Cambrian rocks in 
 South Wales, and certainly not as identified by organic 
 
378 SIR RODERICK MURCHISON. 
 
 remains, though I am certain there are inferior slaty grau- 
 wackes at St. David's, like those of the Longmynd in Salop, 
 which are much older than my fossil Silurian and of this 
 you know I have decisive proofs in Salop, where the Cara- 
 doc sandstone rests on the edges of the Longmynd. 1 
 
 "But the question is, If there are no rocks containing 
 fossils differing from those published as Lower Silurian in 
 South Wales, are there such in North Wales, where lime- 
 stones appear in the oldest slaty masses, and the whole 
 is expanded and broken up by the anticlinals you have so 
 well described ? As to Bala, you know that its examination 
 will do nothing in establishing a distinction, and fortu- 
 nately I have said so very distinctly in my Silurian System, 
 and have asked the question, To what extent will the 
 Orthidce and Leptcence in question be found to descend into 
 the Cambrian rocks, and if they really constitute the Proto- 
 zoic type ? (p. 308, Sil. Syst) 
 
 " I mention this now because I understand from Lonsdale 
 that Mr. Sharpe is going to read a paper at the second 
 meeting of the Geological Society, in which he is to show 
 that the Bala limestone is nothing more than a calcareous 
 course in the middle of the Caradoc sandstone. I do not 
 see how he is to do this stratigraphically, but as I never 
 made the transverse section but once, and in your company, 
 I do not pretend to be armed with sufficient proofs that the 
 limestone is inferior to the slaty flagstones on the eastern 
 side of the mountain in which Asaphus Buchii and Silurian 
 
 1 This happened to be a blunder on Murchison's part ; he was right aa 
 regarded the unconformability, but wrong in the position which he had 
 assigned in the Silurian System to the overlying strata. These are what 
 we now term Upper Llandovery (that is, at the base of the Upper Silurian 
 series), and not Caradoc. 
 
CAMBRIAN AND SILURIAN. 379 
 
 OrtJiidce occur ; and on this point, by way of parenthesis, I 
 should like to be furnished with your view, in order that 
 I may keep the ' Sharp ' fellow in his place, should he trans- 
 gress bounds. 
 
 " But to come to the question : If Bala is zoologically 
 Lower Silurian (and that you have yourself now stated in 
 your Letters to Wordsworth), if Coniston Water Head and 
 Ambleside (at the latter place Keyserling and myself con- 
 vinced ourselves of "the same) is the same thing, and if no 
 older rock is known to contain fossils in Cumberland, it 
 follows, that the only fossil type which remains to be 
 appealed to is that of the Snowdon slates. In our recent 
 visit, Keyserling and myself collected a good many fossils 
 both on the north and on the west flanks of that mountain, 
 and my friend, who is a very good conchologist, came to the 
 conclusion on the spot, that the prevalent and abundant 
 forms are two or three species of Orthis (flabellulum and 
 alternata) well known in Lower Silurian and Caradoc, with 
 a rare new form of Leptcena ; and Sowerby, who has since 
 seen our lot, writes to me to the same effect, and tells me 
 that Salter's determinations with you came to the same 
 results. 
 
 " Now, I have no intention whatever of writing upon this 
 point, except in my exordium on Palaeozoics touching Eussia, 
 where I have to treat of them over an area as large as all 
 our Europe together. On that occasion, and also in taking 
 leave of the geologists on the 1 7th February, I must deliver 
 my opinion. Your Wordsworth letter is before me, and is 
 a meet subject for my comment, but I wish to have some- 
 thing from you touching North Wales. If this is not done, 
 De la Beche and Co., advancing from South Wales, will 
 
380 SIR RODERICK MURCHISON. 
 
 have the credit with the public of correcting you. But if 
 you now say that the slaty region to the north-west of the 
 Silurian rocks was left undefined as to fossils, on account 
 of your never having examined the forms you so long ago 
 collected (and take any line you please, either to contend or 
 not for great thickness of the lowest fossiliferous strata), 
 then I shall be at ease, and know how to use your authority 
 as well as my own. 1 
 
 1 Murchison's anxiety to carry Sedgwick with him, if possible, in his 
 change of the Silurian base-line, is well shown in this letter and in the 
 following postscript to it : " In the part which specially refers to what I 
 have been writing to you about, I should, in case you will authorize me, 
 propose to write something such as follows : After asking ' if no efforts 
 had been recently made to determine the point if there were or not a 
 group of older fossils than the Lower Silurian, and some paragraphs 
 relating thereto,' I go on to say, ' Judging from their infraposition, great 
 thickness, and distinct lithological characters, it was presumed (when the 
 Cambrian system was so named) that these greatly developed inferior 
 slaty rocks would be found to contain a class of organic remains peculiar 
 to themselves, the more so as the few forms then discovered in them 
 seemed to' differ from the Lower Silurian types. Subsequent researches 
 have, however, decided otherwise. In the slaty region of the north- 
 west of England, of which by hard labours he so long ago rendered 
 himself the master, Professor Sedgwick has now satisfied himself that 
 the lowest organic remains which can be traced are no others than those 
 published as Lower Silurian, whilst in revisiting the mountains of Cam- 
 bria and Snowdon, whose framework he was the first to explain, he has 
 come to similar conclusions respecting the oldest fossiliferous tracts of 
 North Wales.' 
 
 " ' In the meantime, through the labours of the Ordnance Survey,' etc. 
 Then Mr. Sharpe et hoc genus omne. 
 
 " This is the form in which I should wish to place the case, both 
 because it is in my mind quite true, and also because, as I have said in 
 my letter, I wish you to speak in your own place." 
 
 Sedgwick made no objection at the time to this statement of his views. 
 On the contrary, when he received the proof-sheets of the address he 
 made comments on other parts, but, so far as can be judged from the 
 letters still extant, offered no criticism whatever on the proposed narra- 
 tive given in the preceding extract. He returned the proofs with the 
 remarks, " The papers are excellent, and use my hints as you think 
 right. ... I have looked over the slips and made marks. ... I did look over 
 the peroration. It is very good." It was, to say the least, unfortunate 
 
CAMBRIAN AND SILURIAN. 381 
 
 " The triple zoological division of the Palseozoic rocks 
 (exclusive of the Magnesian Limestone) is now so very gene- 
 rally proved to the very eastern extremities of Europe, that 
 it is well that we who have been the agents in first enun- 
 ciating it should not be frightened and driven out of our 
 fairly won views because the Cambrian tail-piece was not 
 finished off. For my own part, I am as convinced as it is 
 possible to be, that we have now thoroughly ascertained not 
 
 that, if he had really any strong objections to the statements in the 
 address, he did not frankly express them at the time when the proof- 
 sheets were sent to him. Had he done so we can hardly believe that he 
 could afterwards have found occasion to say of any sentence in that 
 document: "I smiled when I read this strange passage; but I did not 
 think it worth while formally to contradict it ; in omission and commis- 
 sion it is a virtual mis-statement of the facts." (Letters to Wordsworth, 
 later edition, p. 87.) Surely by first sending his friend a sketch of what 
 he meant to say, and then the proof-sheets of what he had said, Murchison 
 showed no common care to secure his concurrence. It is hard to understand 
 why Sedgwick should have entered into verbal and other criticisms in the 
 most friendly and even jocular style, and yet have left untouched a 
 passage which raised a " smile," and which he felt to be " a virtual mis- 
 statement of the facts." 
 
 But what was the " strange passage " which called forth these sharp 
 words ? As quoted and italicised by Sedgwick himself, it ran as follows : 
 " We were both aware that the Bala limestone fossils agreed with the 
 Lower Silurian ; but depending upon Professor Sedgwick's conviction that 
 there were other and inferior masses, also fossiliferous, we both clung to 
 the hope that such strata, when thoroughly explored, would offer a suf- 
 ficiency of new forms to characterize an inferior system." 
 
 On this passage he remarks as follows : " When the author states 
 ' that we both clung to the hope that the Cambrian groups would offer a 
 sufficiency of new forms to characterize an inferior system,' I can only 
 reply, that the hope to which he clung was not derived from anything I had 
 ever said or written; and that I had not, in 1842 and 1843, the shadow 
 of a hope that any new system of animal life, any group of new forms 
 ' marking an inferior system,' would be found among the Lower Cam- 
 brian groups. I had constantly expressed, and repeatedly published, a 
 directly contrary opinion." (The italics are in the original.) 
 
 Now it will hardly be believed that Murchison's statement is not only 
 borne out by passages in Sedgwick's letters, but seems actually based 
 upon them. In support of this assertion two extracts may be given. 
 Writing to his friend after his autumnal ramble in Wales in 1842, Sedg- 
 
382 SIR RODERICK MURCHISON. 
 
 only the Palaeozoic, but, as I ventured long ago to call it, 
 the Protozoic type, and that that is no other than the strik- 
 ing orthidian Lower Silurian group, which, first rising up on 
 the flanks of old Caradoc, is extended to any thickness you 
 please to contend for. In this last respect, however, you 
 must have the fear of De la Beche and his trigonometrical 
 forces before your eyes, who, whilst they give 12,000 or 
 15,000 feet thickness to the South Welsh coal-field, are cut- 
 ting down our older rocks at a terrible rate. . . . 
 
 "Before I left town I presented 600 to Lonsdale, in a 
 silver vase with a suitable inscription. Fitton accompanied 
 me, and the poor fellow was quite overcome. The deed how- 
 ever had an excellent effect, for his eyes brightened up in 
 the following days, and he wrote me a most affectionate 
 note, saying ' that he was now enabled, even in his retire- 
 ment, to carry on his studies, and that he would go on with 
 that of the Polypifers." 
 
 Among the miscellaneous correspondence of this period 
 which the President of the Geological Society carried on, 
 was one regarding a proposed purchase of the island of 
 Staffa. It was represented urgently to Murchison that as 
 
 wick says : "To my knowledge of the sections I added nothing last 
 autumn, but I hoped to make out distinct fossil groups, indicating a 
 descending series, and marking the successive descending calcareous 
 junks. But, as I told you, I failed." The italics in this and the next 
 quotation are underlined in the original. Again, just before the anniver- 
 sary in February 1843, in reply to Murchison's request for information 
 (in the letter quoted above in the text), Sedgwick remarks, " In regard to 
 N. Wales you know my general views. I stated last year (see the abstracts) 
 that on unpacking my Welsh fossils I could not discover any trace of a 
 lower zoological system than that indicated in your Lower Silurian types. 
 I did however expect to find certain definite groups indicating a succes- 
 sion in the ascending steps of a vast section (certainly many thousand feet 
 thick), and my hope was last September to prove this point, but I failed 
 utterly, as I told you before, and at present I really know no sxich definite 
 groups." 
 
ADDRESS TO THE GEOLOGISTS. 383 
 
 the island was likely to come into the market, no more 
 fitting purchaser could be found than the Geological Society 
 of London, and that in the hands of that learned body it 
 would remain as a perpetual monument consecrated to the 
 progress of science. It is needless to say that this project 
 never took shape. There is little sympathy in Britain with 
 any such fanciful notions regarding the acquirement of 
 places of great natural interest by the State or learned 
 societies for the good of the country and in the cause of 
 scientific progress. Fortunately that fairy isle is too small 
 and too barren to warrant the cost of protecting walls and 
 notices to trespassers, and its wonders are of too solid and 
 enduring a nature to be liable to effacement by the ruthless 
 curiosity of the British tourist. And so it stands amid the 
 lone sea, open to all comers, lifting its little carpet of bright 
 green above the waves which have tunnelled its pillared 
 cliffs, and which are ceaselessly destroying and renewing 
 the beauty of the sculpture they have revealed. 
 
 From the foregoing letter to Sedgwick it is clear that 
 the preparation of the address to the Geological Society, and 
 in particular the forcible enunciation in it of his views 
 regarding the classification of the older rocks, engaged much 
 of Murchison's attention during the winter. When at last 
 the anniversary came he produced a most voluminous 
 oration, extending over eighty-seven closely printed octavo 
 pages, and discussing not only the question lying at the 
 time nearest his own heart, but the general march of geo- 
 logy all over the world. Again he presents to foreign 
 geologists filie de Beaumont and Dufre'noy the Wollaston 
 medal with due laudation. After a kindly and appreciative 
 eulogy of Lonsdale and welcome of Forbes, he plunges at 
 
384 SIR RODERICK MURCHISON. 
 
 once into the palaeozoic rocks, and is soon in the midst of 
 Silurian and Cambrian nomenclature, laying down with re- 
 newed emphasis the view that his own Silurian deposits 
 contained the records of the earliest type or fades of 
 organized existence. In the early summer of the previous 
 year Sedgwick had written his now well-known letters to 
 Wordsworth on the Geology of the Lake District, in which he 
 summarized in popular but accurate form the results of his 
 long labours among these mountains. Another observer, Mr. 
 Daniel Sharpe, already referred to, had been at work upon 
 the Cumbrian tracts, and transferring his knowledge of them 
 to the investigation of North Wales, had announced his 
 belief that Sedgwick's Bala rocks were really, both by fossils 
 and physical continuity, the very same as some of Mur- 
 chison's Lower Silurian series. 1 Sedgwick himself had spent 
 
 1 In the beginning of his paper Mr. Sharpe stated that the view of the 
 infraposition of the so-called Cambrian rocks of Sedgwick to the Lower 
 Silurian of Murchison was adopted by the latter geologist on the autho- 
 rity of the former. In long subsequent years, Sedgwick bitterly com- 
 plained that this was a mis-statement, which Murchison never corrected, 
 but, on the contrary, proceeded to profit by, though he had abundant 
 opportunity of rectifying it in this address. And the inference drawn is, 
 that Murchison was guilty of disingenuous conduct unworthy of a gen- 
 tleman, still more of a friend (Introduction to British Palceozoic Fossils, p. 
 Ixxiii.) But, so far from regarding it as a mis-statement, Murchison him- 
 self repeats it in this very address. He says that he steadily relied on 
 Sedgwick's original opinion, that great masses of the slaty rocks of North 
 Wales lay below the Silurian rocks. His respect for Sedgwick's opinion 
 was profound, and that opinion he believed to have been all along in 
 favour of the infraposition of all the so-called Cambrian rocks. This 
 belief, as we have already seen (ante, p. 225, note), was commonly held by 
 geologists, and, if a mistake, Sedgwick never did anything to set it right 
 until he found some of his Cambrian formations claimed as Silurian, when 
 he maintained that he had never made any error in his work, except in being 
 misled by his friend. The charge of unfair conduct on Murchison's part 
 was utterly unfounded. Nothing could have been more candid than the 
 way in which he acted in this matter. Equally groundless was the accusa- 
 tion that he had " stolen a march " tipon Sedgwick, unless we are to be 
 told that under such conduct we must include making our victim privy 
 
ADDRESS TO THE GEOLOGISTS. 385 
 
 part of the summer of 1842 in re-examining some por- 
 tions of the North Welsh area, with the view of clear- 
 ing up the difficulties in the way of reconciling his own 
 work with that of his friend. But he could not establish 
 any distinction by means of fossils between the rocks which 
 he had called Cambrian and those which Murchison had 
 termed Lower Silurian. He intimated this to the President, 1 
 who now, with evident satisfaction, announces it as further 
 proof that the Silurian type of organic remains had been 
 firmly established as the oldest in the geological record. 
 Murchison further dwells on the important aid given to 
 his interpretation by the labours of the Geological Survey, 
 which, as we have seen, had now been extended into the 
 Silurian tracts of South Wales. While eulogizing the work 
 of the Ordnance Geological Surveyors in Wales, he turns to 
 that of their fellow-labourers, and notably Captain (after- 
 wards General) Portlock, in Ireland, adding words of praise 
 to his notice of the geological map of Ireland by Mr. (now 
 Sir Eichard) Griffith that wonderful achievement, which 
 gives its courageous and undaunted author so honourable 
 a rank among the great geological map-makers of this 
 century. 
 
 We need not follow the address through its review of 
 contemporary foreign geology, with its elaborate analysis of 
 what had then been recently accomplished in Eussia, the 
 Caucasus, Asia Minor, Turkey, the Alps, Hindustan, Aff- 
 ghanistan, China, Egypt, and North America, or through its 
 
 beforehand to the theft, and submitting for his approval the plan by 
 which he is to be cozened. Yet Sedgwick asserted that the first intima- 
 tion he had of Murchison's claim over the Upper Cambrian rocks 
 as Lower Silurian was obtained accidentally, some years after the seizure 
 had been made ! l See p. 382, note. 
 
 VOL. I. 2 B 
 
386 SIR RODERICK MURCHISON. 
 
 details regarding the progress of dynamical and palseonto- 
 logical geology. Its main interest for us lies in its relation 
 to the controversy, now imminent, regarding the palaeozoic 
 nomenclature and to Murchison's position in that con- 
 troversy. Writing of it many years afterwards he thus 
 expressed himself : " That address embodied all my matured 
 views on the classification of the older rocks, and par- 
 ticularly as to the unity of the Silurian system and the im- 
 possibility of manufacturing a fossiliferous Cambrian system 
 separate from the well-recognised Lower Silurian types. 
 Von Buch, Humboldt, and all the foreign geologists, as well 
 as my colleagues in the work in Eussia, saw the necessity 
 of this. I therefore openly proclaimed my conviction that 
 the masses of hard and slaty rocks of Wales to the west of 
 my Silurian map and sections, and which were supposed to 
 be Cambrian, before their order and contents were elaborated 
 by the surveyors and Sir H. de la Beche, were simply 
 folds and repetitions of the already classified Silurian rocks 
 of Shropshire, Hereford, Eadnor, etc. It is from this date 
 that I considered my classification to be established on the 
 broad European scale." 
 
 Resigning the chair to one of the founders of the Geo- 
 logical Society, Henry Warburton, Murchison concluded his 
 second and last tenure of the office. " I bid you farewell," 
 he said to his fellow-members, " as friends in whose society, 
 whilst acquiring knowledge, I have passed the happiest days 
 of my life. ... I have deeply felt the honour of presiding 
 over men who in the course of a quarter of a century have 
 demonstrated that there is no such thing as ' odium geologi- 
 cum,' and whose members, rivals as they must be, have only 
 sought to excel each other in their ardent search after truth." 
 
ODIUM GEOLOGICUM. 387 
 
 Did the enthusiasm of the moment lead the writer to forget 
 the very marked ' odium ' which had been evoked during the 
 early Devonian warfare ? Had the angry .words of Mac- 
 culloch vanished from his memory ? It was well, indeed, 
 that they should, but not without leaving behind them just 
 trace enough to keep him, even in the glow of excitement, 
 from painting in too rosy a hue the intercourse of men whom 
 even the brotherhood of science could not save from the 
 ordinary frailties of humanity. To his eulogistic language 
 the geological doings of after years furnished a comment of 
 bitter irony, since his own name, to his deep grief indeed, 
 and most unwillingly on his part, came to stand out pro- 
 minently in the most noted instance of the odium geologi- 
 cuni which the history of British science has yet offered. 
 
 END OF VOL. I. 
 
 FEINTED BY T. AND A. CONSTABLE, PRINTERS TO HER MAJESTY, 
 AT THE EDINBURGH UNIVERSITY PRESS. 
 

 RETURN EARTH SCIENCES LIBRARY 
 
 TO +> 230 McCone Hall 642-2997 
 
 LOAN PERIOD 1 
 1 MONTH 
 
 2 
 
 3 
 
 4 
 
 5 
 
 6 
 
 ALL BOOKS MAY BE RECALLED AFTER 7 DAYS 
 
 Books needed for class reserve are subject to immediate recall 
 
 DUE AS STAMPED BELOW 
 
 FORM NO. DD8 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY 
 BERKELEY, CA 94720 
 
; BERKELEY LIBRARIES 
 
 Sforan