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East India Company, as Professor of Geology at the Engineering 

 College of Roorkee, in Northern India. To a man of Harkness's 

 tastes this offer must have been a most tempting one, for not only 

 were the proferred terms satisfactory in every respect, and the 

 climate there well suited to the constitution of Europeans, but 

 Harkness would have had a splendid opportunity of extending his 

 knowledge of his favourite science in directions hardly attainable 

 by geologists whose field work is confined exclusively to the rocks 

 of the British Isles. Moreover, little or nothing had hitherto been 

 written about that part, so that altogether, the new field presented 

 to any man that, like Harkness, was gifted with the power of 

 rapidly taking in structural details in the field, and, in the house, 

 equally gifted with the facile pen of a practised writer, an offer that 

 must have appeared so advantageous, that the considerations that 

 would induce him to decline it must have been weighty indeed. 

 What those considerations were may best be gathered from the 

 following reply : — 



Cork, 30th Jany., 1854. 



My dear Sir Henry, 



I feel very deeply indebted to you for your great kindness in affording 

 me an opportunity of accepting or refusing the situation of Professor of Geology 

 at Roorkee, and I am sorry that, after taking the matter into due consideration, 

 I am obliged to do the latter. 



Although I should gladly avail myself in improving my present position, 

 I am induced to decline the situation you have so kindly offered me for the 

 following reasons : — 



isl. I conceive that, had my health been such as to have enabled me to stay 

 in India a sufficient time, on my return I should have found myself an old man 

 deprived of all the pleasures which my stay in India would have led me to look 

 forward to, for I should know home and British friends only as I had left, and 

 find both greatly changed when I returned, and consequently my anticipations 

 would be so far disappointed that home under such circumstances would afford 

 me little pleasure — a matter which I have too often observed in long residents 

 in India on their return. 



2!.'d. A life spent in India would deprive me of those opportunities which I 

 enjoy in this country of coming in contact with those whose pursuits are of a 

 kindred nature to my own, and also of the facilities I enjoy of acquiring inform- 

 ation on my favourite subject ; and although the district of Northern India 

 furnishes an almost unbroken field for geological investigation, I think that, 



