448 PROCEEDINGS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY 



most cultivated scholars, and his hospitable house in Berlin was one of 

 their most frequent resorts. No scholar, perhaps, ever lived, at least 

 in Germany, who had stronger friends, greater admirers, or fewer ene- 

 mies than Immanuel Bekker. 



Sir Roderick Impey Murchison died on the 22d of October, 1871, 

 in his eightieth year. In his death the world has lost one who, in the 

 popular estimation, not only shared with Lyell the sceptre of dominion 

 among British geologists, but held, conjointly with him, a sort of uni- 

 versal empire. The labors of both of these men have extended beyond 

 their country, and they have made not only Europe but America trib- 

 utary to their reputation. Of these two, Lyell still remains, and, as 

 his latest work, published in 1870, shows, retains unimpaired that clear- 

 ness of style and that rare philosophic acumen which have made his 

 masterpiece the Principia of modern geology, — a classic which future 

 generations will study with the same delight as the present. Very 

 different have been labors, and unlike the gifts of Murchison. Like 

 Lyell and his distinguished predecessors, the earlier prophets of the 

 Scottish school of geology, — Hutton and Playfair, — Murchison was a 

 Scot, and was proud of his ancient Celtic pedigree. It is characteristic 

 of the man, that, a few years since, he raised in the Highlands of his 

 native land a monument to one of his Jacobite ancestors, who had 

 sacrified fortune and life in the cause of the exiled Stuarts. The 

 father of Sir Roderick was a physician who, in the last century, 

 amassed a fortune in India, where he was a friend of the noted Elijah 

 Impey. Marrying soon after his return, he purchased an estate at 

 Tarradale in Rosshire, where his son, the subject of the present notice, 

 was born in 1792, and was early left an orphan by the death of his 

 father. 



Like many others who have gained an honorable name in British 

 geology, Murchison had not the advantage of a university training; but, 

 after some years at a grammar-school in Durham, entered the army at 

 the age of sixteen, and was soon ordered to Spain, where he served 

 with distinction under Wellington ; carrying the colors of his regiment 

 in a desperate charge at Vimieira, and being left wounded on the field 

 at Corunna. At the close of the war, he left the service, a captain of 

 dragoons, and, returning to England, married in 1815. Possessed of 

 wealth and social position, he seems for the next few years to have 

 given himself to fox-hunting and the usual amusements of his class ; 



