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this long period he had explored, on foot, the geology of large dis- 

 tricts in the north of England, in Scotland, and in various parts of 

 Ireland. The reports of the British Association and the Quarterly 

 Journal of the Geological Society bear witness to his industry and 

 to the painstaking minuteness of his method of investigation. To 

 him we owe our earliest exact information regarding the correlatives 

 of the reptiliferous sandstones of Dumfriesshire and Cumberland. 

 It was his patient labours continued year after year over ground 

 most difficult to unravel, that led the way to the working out of the 

 structure of the Silurian uplands of the south of Scotland. To his 

 research, too, is due the identification of the metamorphic rocks of 

 the north-west of Ireland with those of the west of Scotland. To 

 the elucidation of every one of the Palaeozoic system of deposits 

 he has contributed something of value. 



"But important as was his scientific work^ it had not a wider and 

 more hearty recognition among his brother geologists than his own 

 admirable qualities of head and heart. Who that has been privi- 

 leged with his friendship will not cherish the memory of his 

 earnestness over even the driest of details, his quiet enthusiasm, his 

 generous admiration for the work of others, his unfailing cheerful- 

 ness? Who will forget that beaming ruddy face, never absent 

 from the platform of Section C at the British Association meetings, 

 always ready to rise among the speakers there and to reappear at 

 the festive gatherings in the evening ? There have been men who 

 have graven their names more deeply on the registers of scientific 

 thought and progress, but there have been few whose sunny nature 

 has more endeared them in the recollection of their friends than 

 Robert Harkness." 



