194 EMINENT NATURALISTS. 



his caves, ready to pick a bone with any one, posting 

 to and fro whenever he heard of any new find, and 

 breaking the monotony of Oxford lectures by a ride 

 across country with his students, or by stamping the 

 memory of Oxford or Kimmeridge clay in their minds 

 by leading them into quagmires. There were the 

 eagle-eyed Sedgwick, full of enthusiasm and not less 

 ready for the fray ; Wollaston, stern in his search for 

 truth ; the cautious Warburton ; the hasty Fitton ; 

 the critical Conybeare ; the shrewd Leonard Horner, 

 and others. They were men for the most part of 

 wealth and position, and with them were associated 

 the most distinguished philosophers of the time, 

 Whewell, Davy, Stokes, and others. All these were 

 men of wide and liberal minds, and naturally would 

 open to Murchison the society for which he was by 

 his own tastes peculiarly fitted. He could moreover 

 follow his new pursuit without sacrificing his out-door 

 exercises."* 



He entered eagerly and yet with method into the 

 career before him. He first set himself to master 

 what books had to tell him of the rocks, and then he 

 proceeded on a tour along the south coast with his 

 wife, whom he left at Lyme Regis, to work quietly 

 at the fossils. He got as far west as Cornwall, where 

 he first saw the rocks of which he and Sedgwick 

 were afterwards to be the historians. On his return 

 he wrote his first scientific paper on the district 

 immediately round Nursted, which proved his 



* Edinburgh Eeview, 1875. 



