196 EMINENT NATURALISTS. 



identified with their fossils." Being possessed with 

 this knowledge, he had no difficulty in proving, in a 

 comprehensive Memoir, that the coal of Brora belongs 

 to the same Oolitic group of rocks as those of York- 

 shire. To his meeting with Phillips and Smith may 

 fairly be assigned his first mastery of the principles of 

 geological classification, which he afterwards used with 

 such important results in the interpretation of the 

 Silurian, Devonian, and Permian rocks. 



By the time Murchison had been three years at work 

 as a practical geologist, he had not only mastered what 

 was then known of the rocks of Great Britain, but he 

 had added to the general stock of knowledge by his 

 expeditions into Scotland. He had become one of the 

 leading members of the Geological Society, and one of 

 the most ardent and promising geologists of the day. 

 It was only natural that he should turn his newly- 

 acquired knowledge into account by similar expeditions 

 on the Continent. Accordingly, in the winter of 

 1828-29, we find him arranging the first of the 

 journeys which occupied him for the best part of the 

 next three years, the ground explored extending 

 through France to the shores of the Adriatic on the 

 one hand, and through Rhineland and Austria into 

 Hungary on the other. In this expedition he was 

 accompanied a certain way by Lyell. In June follow- 

 ing, Murchison, together with Professor Sedgwick again 

 visited the twisted and broken strata which compose the 

 Alps. They passed by Bonn and Grottingen, then 

 through Dresden to the Carinthian Alps, where they 

 were received bv the Archduke John, " the most scien- 



