2/6 HEROES OF SCIENCE. 



examination at the Royal College of Surgeons in 

 England, the young man was sent out to India, 

 and living at Lucknow for seventeen years, made 

 a fortune. He came home to the old country, and 

 bought the estate of Tarradale, in the eastern part 

 of Ross, kept up the old Highland customs, and 

 made himself useful as a medical man when aid 

 was required. He married, in 1791, the daughter 

 of Mackenzie, of Fairburn, lineal representative of 

 the Rory More, or Big Roderick Mackenzie, to 

 whom the estates had been granted by James V. 

 Their younger son, Roderick Impey was born in 

 February, 1792, and was reared by the "sonsie" 

 miller's wife of Tarradale, who hushed him to sleep 

 with gaelic lullabies, and gave him an occasional 

 taste of the famous whiskey distilled on the ad- 

 jacent lands of Ferrintosh. But the father got 

 delicate and moved to the south, carrying with 

 him his household. On the way an end nearly 

 came to the future geologist, for his father, wishing 

 to make the boy " stand fire," presented what was 

 thought an empty pistol at him. The mother 

 snatched the child away, and instantly a charge of 

 shot rattled through the window. The father died 

 when Murchison was only four years of age, and 

 the boy wrote in after years his sad memory of the 

 last of his father : " The opening of the red 

 damask curtains of the lofty old-fashioned bed, the 

 last kiss of my dying parent, and the form of the 

 old-fashioned edifice to which the invalid had been 

 removed, have been stereotyped in my mind." 



