MURCHISON. 297 



experience of the hearty hospitaHty of those 

 regions. An occasional shot at grouse or deer, 

 varied the monotony of the hammering ; but even 

 when stalking, Murchison could not keep his eyes 

 from the rocks. Amid the jottings of his sport he 

 had facts to chronicle about the gneiss or porphyry 

 or sandstone through which the sport had led him. 

 This characteristic, traceable even at this early 

 period of his life, remained prominent up to the 

 last autumn of his life in which he was able to 

 wield a gun or hammer. 



The summer had in great part passed before he 

 reached that part of the eastern coast of Suther- 

 landshire where the scene of his special task lay; 

 but that task proved to be eminently easy. From 

 Dunrobin, where he was hospitably entertained, he 

 could follow northwards and southwards a regular 

 succession of strata, and he recognized in them the 

 equivalents of parts of the oolite series of York- 

 shire. The Brora coal, therefore, instead of form- 

 ing part of the true carboniferous system, was 

 simply a local peculiarity in the oolitic series. He 

 made a collection of the fossils, which offered a 

 means of satisfactory comparison with the oolitic 

 rocks of England. 



The rapidity with which this piece of work 

 could be done left time for a prolongation of the 

 tour northwards through Caithness, even up into 

 the Orkney Islands, but at length the tourists had 

 to prepare for a southward migration again. 

 Reaching Inverness, they turned eastward to 



