No. 2.] MISCELLANEOUS. 237 



and comparison of the English Devonians with those of Rhenish 

 Prussia, was pubHshed in 1839, and a final classification adopted. 



In 1840, accompanied by De Verneuil, Murchison visited 

 Russia, at that period very little known geologically. 



They examined the banks of the rivers Volkofi" and Siass, and 

 the shores of Lake Onega, thence to Archangel and tlie borders 

 of the White Sea, and followed the river Dvvina in the sovern- 

 nient of Vologda. They traversed the Volga and returned by 

 Moscow to St. Petersburg, examining the Valdai Hills, Lake 

 Ilmen, and the banks of the rivers which they passed. They 

 then returned to England, but having been invited by the late 

 Emperor Nicholas to superintend a Geological Survey of Russia, 

 the two geologists returned to St. Petersburg in the spring of 

 1841, and being joined by Count Keyserling and Lieutenant 

 Kokscharow, they proceeded to explore the Ural Mountains, the 

 Southern Provinces of the Empire and the Coal Districts between 

 the Dneiper and the Don. In 1842 Murchison travelled alone 

 through several parts of Germany, Poland, and the Carpathian 

 Mountains, the better to understand the relations of the irreat 

 formations to each other over wide areas. In 1844 he explored 

 the Palaeozoic rocks of Sweden and Norway. In 1845-6 he 

 completed his great joint work on " The Geology of Russia and 

 the Ural Mountains,'' in two quarto volumes of TOO and 600 

 pages, copiously illustrated with maps, sections, and plates of 

 fossils. Not long after the publication of this w^ork, Mr. Murchi- 

 son was knighted by her Majesty, the Emperor having previously 

 conferred several Russian orders on him, including that of St. 

 Stanislaus. In 1849 he received the Copley medal from the 

 Royal Society, in recognition of his having established the Silu- 

 rian system in geology. 



His researches (extending over six visits) in the Alps, Apen- 

 nines, and Carpathian mountains, established the fact of a gradu- 

 ated transition from Secondary to Tertiary rocks, and clearly 

 separates the great Numniulitic formation from the Cretaceous 

 formations with which it was confounded. 



Ranking next in importance to his definition of the Silurian 

 System was his difi"erentiation of the Permians. Having satisfied 

 himself that the Lower Red Sandstone, and the Magnesian Lime- 

 stone and Marl Slates constituted one natural group only, whicli, 

 from their organic contents, must be entirely separated from the 

 overlying formations, he proposed, in 1841, that the group should 



