LINNEAN SOCIETY OF LONDON. Ityi 



Hampshire and Surrey," which was published in the Society's 

 * Transactions ' (vol. ii.). He afterwards made researches in Suther- 

 landshire, where he examined the coal strata, and showed that it 

 was a member of the Oolitic series ; and in the following year he 

 again visited the Highlands in company with Professer Sedgwick, 

 when they succeeded in showing that the primary sandstone of 

 M'CuUoch was nothing more than the true Old Eed Sandstone, now 

 also called " Devonian." The result of these researches was read 

 before the Geological Society, and published in its 'Transactions,' 

 vols. ii. & iii. In 1828 he studied the extinct volcanoes of Auvergne 

 and the geology of North Italy, and he afterwards published as the 

 results of those studies some memoirs on the excavation of valleys, 

 as illustrated by the volcanic rocks of Central France and the Ter- 

 tiary strata of Southern France. 



Under the advice of the late Dean Buckland, Mr. Murchison next 

 explored the vast and regular deposits of remote periods, which are 

 most prominently seen in Herefordshire and on the borders of "Wales, 

 and which he afterwards called the Silurian system, after the SUures, 

 who inhabited that part of our island. These researches he followed 

 up by others in Pembrokeshire, to the west of Milford Haven ; and 

 the results of his generalizations respecting the antiquity of the Si- 

 lurian system, as underlying the "Devonian" system, was made 

 public at the meeting of the British Association for the Advancement 

 of Science in 1831, and subsequently published in the ' Transactions 

 of the Geological Society,' and in a large work on the Palaeozoic 

 Geology of England and Wales, which issued from the press in 1859. 



Further geological investigations in Devonshire and Cornwall 

 followed, in the course of which, aided by Professor Sedgwick, Mur- 

 chison definitely ascertained that the stratified rocks of those two 

 counties are the equivalents of the Old Eed Sandstone, and he gave 

 them the name of " Devonian." 



After having travelled for some time in Russia, Mr. Murchison in 

 1845 completed, in conjunction with M. de VerneuU and Count Von 

 Keyserling, his magnificent work on the ' Geology of Russia and the 

 Ural Mountains.' This consists of two volumes in quarto ; the first, 

 relating specifically to the geological part of the subject, consisting 

 of above 700 pages ; the second, in the French language, relating to 

 the ' Palseontologie,' occupying more than 600 pages ; the whole 

 copiously illustrated by geological maps and sections, and by accurate 

 figures of organic remains. In 1846, not long after the publication 

 of this work, Mr. Murchison was knighted by Her Majesty, the 



