xlii PROCEEDINGS OF THE 



Emperor Nicholas having previously conferred upon him several 

 Russian orders, including that of St. Stanislaus. 



His work on the geology of Russia was afterwards translated into 

 Russian, and published in 1849. 



In tlys same year Sir Roderick received the Copley Medal from the 

 Royal Society, in recognition of his having established the Silurian 

 system in geology. About this time he undertook another (his sixth) 

 visit to the Alps, and on his return published a memoir of some 300 

 pages in the ' Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society,' upon 

 " The Geological Structure of the Alps, Apennines, and Carpathian 

 Mountains." In this memoir he established the fact of a graduated 

 transition from Secondary to Tertiary rocks, and separated the 

 great Nummulite formation from the Cretaceous deposits with which 

 it had been confounded. This work has been translated and published 

 in Italian. 



The uppermost series of the Palaeozoic rocks, reposing immediately 

 upon the Carboniferous system, consists of those formerly known in 

 England as the Lower New Red Sandstone, and the Magnesian Lime- 

 stone, and Marl-slate. Sir R. Murchison, having satisfied himself 

 that they constituted one natural group only, which, from its organic 

 contents, must be entirely separated from all formations above, pro- 

 posed in 1841 that the group should receive the name of the " Per- 

 mian " system, from its extensive development in the ancient king- 

 dom of Permia, in Russia; and this denomination has been universally 

 adopted by geologists. In a memoir produced in 1855, in conjunction 

 with Professor Morris, on the German Palseozoi(; rocks, he has returned 

 to the subject of the Permian system, and shows that there is no break 

 between it and the lowest system of the Mesozoic strata — the Triassic 

 — which succeeds it in the ascending series. 



In 1854 Sir Roderick pu.bhshed his best-known work ' Siluria ; 

 or, the History of the oldest Tcnow7i Rocks containing Organic Re- 

 mains ; with a Brief Sketch of the Distribution of Gold over the 

 Earth.' This volume includes a general view of the structure of 

 the earth's crust, and more particularly of the more ancient series of 

 strata, of which the Silurian system is the lowest ; and a summary of 

 the author's general views of geological science, including the points 

 on which he differed from his friend. Sir Charles Lyell, and from 

 Professor Sedgwick. 



There is one other subject, in connexion with which the name of 

 Sir Roderick Murchison will long be remembered in the world of 

 science and of commerce, and that is the discovery of the gold-fields 



