MURCHISON. 293 



an opinion upon them. In these respects it was 

 typical of all his later work. Having shown by 

 this first publication his capacity as observer and 

 describer, and being further recommended by the 

 leisure which his position of independence enabled 

 him to command, he was soon after elected one of 

 the two honorary secretaries of the Geological 

 Society. " Lyell being then a law-student, with 

 chambers in the Temple, could only devote a 

 portion of his time to our science, and was glad to 

 make way as secretary to one who, like myself, 

 had nothing else to do than think and dream of 

 geology, and work hard to get on in my new 

 vocation." 



In the spring of 1826 he was elected into the 

 Royal Society — an honour more easily won then 

 than now, and for which, as the President, his old 

 friend Sir Humphry Davy told him, he was 

 indebted, not to the amount or value of his 

 scientific work, but to the fact that he was an 

 independent gentleman, having a taste for science, 

 with plenty of time, and enough of money to 

 gratify it. 



Murchison next investigated, at the instance of 

 Dr. Buckland, the geological age of the Brora coal- 

 field, in Sutherlandshire. Some geologists main- 

 tained that the rocks of that district were merely a 

 part of the ordinary coal, or carboniferous system ; 

 others held them to be greatly younger, to be, 

 indeed, of the same general age with the lower 

 oolitic strata of Yorkshire. A good observer 



