256 The Founders of Geology LECT. 



were engaged in constructing a geological map of that 

 country. In Turkey it had been similarly made available 

 by Bone* and De Verneuil. Forchhammer had extended 

 it to Scandinavia. Featherstonehaugh and Eogers had 

 applied it in the United States. Thus within a few years, 

 the Silurian system was found to be developed in all parts 

 of the world, and Murchison's work furnished the key to 

 its interpretation. 



Let us now turn to the researches that were in progress 

 by another great master of English geology, simultaneously 

 with those of Murchison. Adam Sedgwick (1785-1873) 

 belonged to a family that had been settled for 300 years or 

 more in the Dale of Dent, a picturesque district which lies 

 along the western border of Yorkshire. To the end of his 

 long and active life his heart ever turned with fondness to 

 the little valley where he first saw the light, and to the 

 kindly dalesmen among whom he spent his boyhood. He 

 remained to the end a true dalesman himself, with all the 

 frankness of nature, mirthfulness and loyalty, so often 

 found among the natives of these pastoral uplands. He 

 was born in the year 1785, his father being the Vicar of 

 Dent. After receiving his school education at the neigh- 

 bouring little town of Sedbergh, he went to Trinity 

 College, Cambridge, which thenceforth became his home 

 to the end of his life. At the age of thirty-three he was 

 elected to the Woodwardian Professorship of Geology. Up 

 to that time, however, he had shown no special interest in 

 geological pursuits, and though he may have read a little on 

 the subject, his knowledge of it was probably not greater 

 than that of the average college Fellow of his day. His 

 appointment as Professor, however, awakened his dormant 



