236 THE CANADIAN NATURALIST. [Vol. vi. 



gical sketches of landscape that illustrate his works. He is also 

 said to have early become acquainted with Sir Humphry Davy, 

 who su^sested to him that he should attend the lectures of the 

 Royal Institution. This advice he followed, and he also studied 

 with Mr. Richard Phillips, F.R.S. 



In 1825 he was elected a Fellow of the Geological Society of 

 London, and in the same year he read his first paper on " The 

 Geological Formation of the North-west extremity of Sussex, and 

 the adjoining parts of Hants and Surrey," before that Society .f 



In 1826 he recorded the results of his investigations in the 

 Oolitic series of Sutherland, Ross, and the Hebrides, and in the 

 same year he was elected to the Fellowship of the Royal Society ; 

 the following year he again visited the Highlands in company 

 with Professor Sedgwick and succeeded in showing that the 

 primary Sandstone of McCulloch was really the true Old Red 

 Sandstone or Devonian. 



In 1828 he resolved to extend his researches abroad, and to 

 study the extinct volcanos of Auvergne and the geology of the 

 Tvrol. He was accompanied on this occasion by Mr. (now Sir 



Charles) Lyell. 



Following Dr. Buckland's advice, Murchison next devoted 

 himself to a careful examination of the geology of Hereford, 

 Shropshire, and the Welsh Borders, the ancient country of the 

 Sihires, and it was upon this investigation that his great Silurian 

 system was afterwards founded. 



These researches he afterwards followed up by others in Pem- 

 brokeshire, to the west of 3Iilford Haven ; and his conclusions 

 as to the stratigraphical relation between the Devonian and the 

 underlying Silurian systems was made public at the meeting of 

 the British Association for the Advancement of Science in 1831, 

 but his great work did not appear until 1839. 



Further geographical investigations in Devon and Cornwall 

 followed, in which Professor Sedgwick took part, and in 1835 

 and 1839, two journeys were performed by Sedgwick and Mur- 

 chison to the Rhenish Provinces; on the latter occasion M. de 

 Verneuil also accompanied them. The result of these researches, 



t This paper is of great historical interest, being accompanied by 

 a letter from the illustrious Baron Cuvier, in which he gives a detailed 

 description of the Reptilian remcains forwarded to him by Mr. Mur- 

 chison for examination. The specimens which are figured and des- 

 cribed in this paper are now preserved in the British Museum. 



