54 ISLE OF ARRAN. [1839-41. 



tinguished names will in due time be added to the 

 list. 



Again we hear of his spending some time about this 

 date in Epernay, where he had made himself master of 

 the geology of the district. It was his habit to medi- 

 tate upon any observations on new ground, especially 

 where the relations or conditions of the strata were 

 difficult to decipher, and where he had to propound a 

 theory and show facts to account for his views on their 

 superposition. He often pondered upon some unsolved 

 geological problem for years, and it is possible that 

 during this protracted sojourn in France he was amass- 

 ing materials for his important paper, " Sur la Position 

 geologique des Sables et du Calcaire lacustre de Eilly 

 (Marne)," which was not given to the French Geologi- 

 cal Society until the session of 1852-53. 



A notebook for 1840 gives the following entry : 



Excursion to Arran via Ardrossan, September 19, 1840. 

 British Association. 



Skirted the island from north to south, Mr Murchison pointing 

 out the superposition of a red sand and conglomerate, which he 

 classes as the New Ked, but which is supposed by Jameson and 

 others to belong to the Upper Coal-Measures, on a series of 

 impure reddish limestones containing the Productus hemisphcericus 

 and other characteristic mountain-limestone fossils, overlain by a 

 thin band of coal-measures and small coal. This limestone re- 

 poses upon a series of beds belonging to the Old Eed Sandstone 

 a quartzose conglomerate preponderating. The beds of these 

 formations dip northward until we arrive at Glen Sannox, where 

 an anticlinal line reverses the dip to the south about 26, again 

 bringing in the limestones which are worked at Corrie and the 

 overlying red sandstones and conglomerate, which continue to 

 Brodick, frequently, however, traversed and much disturbed by 

 protruded Trap rocks. Landed at Corriegill Point to examine a 

 beautiful instance of the intrusion of pitchstone through the red 



