162 



These letters shew plainly the turn Harkness's attention was 

 taking at the time. Great numbers of the beautiful specimens of 

 graptolites now preserved in the Carlisle Museum he had found in 

 some dark anthracitic slates and schists in the older Palaeozoic 

 rocks of the South of Scotland. Looking across the Solway to 

 our own fells, he must often have asked himself the question 

 whether long-continued and diligent search amongst the rocks 

 that compose those fells might not be rewarded by like results. 

 That his sagacity was not at fault is abundantly evident by the 

 collection that he thereafter began to gather together. 



The first published results of his researches in the new field I 

 have yet been able to find any notice of is that read before the 

 British Association in 1857, on the Geology of the Caldbeck Fells 

 and the Lowest Sedimentary Rocks of Cumberland. This part of 

 our district thenceforward possessed for him a high degree of 

 interest, and it is probable that, with the exception of the late Mr. 

 J. Clifton Ward, no man ever possessed so complete a knowledge 

 of the structural details of this intensely-interesting part of tlie 

 Lake District as did Harkness himself. To say nothing of the 

 geological work he did in connection with it, there is the remarkably- 

 fine series of minerals he collected from that part to bear witness 

 to his indefatigable industry and research over the wild moorlands 

 of that elevated tract. 



We still continue to find records of his going to and fro from 

 various parts of Ireland, turning his attention now to one, then to 

 another branch of geological enquiry, and, as difficulties arose, of 

 his going off to other parts of the kingdom in search of facts that 

 would serve to elucidate these points. He visited Cumberland 

 and Westmorland with increasing frequency about this time, and 

 then, as he encountered any of the numerous difficulties they pre- 

 sented, we find him, in like manner, going far afield with the same 

 object in view. 



It was about this time that he seems first to have recognized the 

 full extent of that famous unconformity we can boast of in Edenside 

 between the Lower members of the Palaeozoic Series and the 

 Upper, or Carboniferous. Realising that the removal by denuda- 



