Nov. 2, 1 87 1 J 



NA TURE 



II 



after having become a captain of dragoons, he quitted 

 the army, and marrying the daughter of General Hugo- 

 nin, settled in England. So ended what he used to call 

 the military episode of his life. Next came the fox- 

 hunting period, when his activity of disposition found 

 vent in the excitement of the chase, into whicli he threw 

 himself heart and soul. He might have continued a 

 merry, hearty, spirting, country gentleman, but for the 

 influence of his wife, who was fond of natural history 

 pursuits, and the advice of Sir Humphrey Divy, who, 

 meeting him at the house of Mr. Morritf, of Rokeby, and 

 seeing in him promise of something better than fox- 

 hunting, advised him to attend the Lectures of the Royal 

 Institution. Sir Roderick used to tell an intcrestmg anec- 

 dote of that early beginning of his scientific career. He 

 was attending the lectures of (if we remember) Dr. 

 Brande, when one day the lecturer's place was taken in 

 his absence by a pale thin lad, his assistant, who gave 

 the lecture and experiments in so admirable a manner 

 as to be received at the end with a hearty round of ap- 

 plause. It was Michael Faraday, and this was his first 

 public appearance. 



After gaining considerable knowledge from public lec- 

 tures and private instruction, Sir Roderick's active mind 

 sought as early as possible to study Nature in the field. 

 Geology was the branch of science which suited best a 

 nature so fond of out-of-door life as his. He had made 

 the acquaintance of William Smith, the father of English 

 Geology, from whose own lips he had learned the order of 

 succession which the marvellous patience and ingenuity 

 of that pioneer of the science had made out for the rocks 

 of England and Wales, and indeed, as was afterwards 

 found, for the rocks of all the world. In the year 1S25, 

 when he was thirty-three years of age, he wrote his first- 

 published paper, " A Geological Sketch of the North- 

 western Extremity of Sussex and the adjoining parts of 

 Hants and Surrey." From that time onwards for nearly 

 half a century he continued to furnish accounts of his 

 observations in the field. Beginning, as was natural, with 

 the district in which he lived, he soon extended his re- 

 searches even as far as his own native Highlands, then 

 step by step over the Continent of Europe, even as far as 

 the confines of Asia. He has published more than 100 

 memoirs on British and Continental Geology, besides 

 numerous addresses to scientific societies, and in addition 

 to upA'ards of twenty memoirs in conjunction with other 

 author.-;. To all this mass of work must be added what 

 he published in separate volumes— his great "'Silurian 

 System," his splendid volumes on '' Russia," and the suc- 

 cessive editions of his " Si'uria." 



Of the incidents of his life during its scientific period 

 it is not necessary here to say much, nor to try to count 

 up the honours showered on him from all part; of the 

 world. There was hardly a scientific Academy any- 

 where which had not enrolled him among its associates, 

 and to the dignities conferred on him by his own Sovereign, 

 were added others conferred by Emperors and Kings 

 abroad. His time was largely passed in London, where 

 he took an active share in scientific work. But every 

 year he made a tour either in this country or on the Con- 

 tinent, and added to our knowledge of the geological 

 structure of the districts which he visited. Sometimes 

 these tours were prolonged, and in the case of his Russian 

 campaign he was absent for two or three 3 ears from 

 England. 



At the lime when Murchison broke ground as a geolo- 

 gist, the science of geology had entered a new phase of its 

 history. The absurd system of Werner, though still up- 

 held by high authority in this country, was daily losing 

 ground, and the siinple and obvious classification of 

 \Villiam Smith on the one hand, and the doctrines of 

 Hutton on the other, were guiding all the younger in- 

 tellects of the day. Murchison's tact is nowhere more 

 conspicuous than in his choice of a field for the exercise 



of his patient energy of research. He saw that the old 

 Wernerian notion of " transition " rocks was doomed, and 

 that it would be a task well worthy of his time and toil to 

 unravel the succession of these rocks, and try to introduce 

 into them the same order and consistency which Smith 

 had shown to mark the Secondary series of England. He 

 chose for the scene of his researches the border country 

 of England and Wales, where these old rocks are well 

 displayed, and after five years of unremitting labour he 

 produced his " Silurian System" — a wjrk, which, though 

 dealing only with the rocks of a limited tract of Britiin, 

 yet first unfolded the earlier chapters of the h'story of 

 life upon our globe. The classification he adopted, though 

 of course necessarily subject to local variation and change, 

 his been found to hold true on the great scale over the 

 whole world. 



This work laid the foundation of Sir Roderick's fame. 

 In his subsequently published " Siluria," which has gone 

 through several editions, he recast the original work, in- 

 troducing much detail regarding the extension of Silurian 

 and older p.rLxozoic rocks into other countries ; but while 

 in the later publication, the results given were necessarily 

 often the work of other observers — the " Silurian System " 

 remains a monument of the unaided labour of a mind 

 quick in observation, sagacious in inference, patient in the 

 accumulation of data, and full of that instructive appre- 

 ciation of the value of facts not yet understood, which is 

 near of kin to genius. 



It would be Ijeyond the limits of this journal to offer an 

 adequate outline of Sir Roderick's scientific work. He 

 was distinctly and specially a geologist. His early 

 attachment to pateozoic rocks never waned, and though 

 now and then he was led to make and record ob- 

 servations on later formations, he always returned to the 

 older deposits as his natural inheritance and doniaia. He 

 was not a paheontologist, but no geologist could use more 

 skilfully than he the data furnished by pahuontology. 

 This faculty he acquired at the beginning of his career, 

 and it marked all his work in the field both at home and 

 abroad. It enabled him to apply to distant countries the 

 principles which he had so successfully used in hi^ovn. 

 Perhaps the leading idea of his scientific life should be 

 regarded as the establishment of the order of succession 

 among rocks. This was what he did in the Silurian re- 

 gion originally, and whit he always endeavoured to ascer- 

 tain in every district to which choice or accident might 

 lead him. He had a singularly quick eye for the geological 

 structure of a country. No one who travelled with him 

 through a hilly tract, and, after listening to his rapid in- 

 ferences, has gone actually over the ground to see, could 

 fail to be struck with the accuracy with which he seized 

 on some of the leading features, and from tlicse deduced 

 the general arrangement of the rock;. It was in this 

 way, and by the use of palaiontolog'cal evidence, that 

 he was enabled to arrive at one of the mo;t brdliant 

 generalisations he ever achieved, when he brought order 

 and intelligibility into the chaos of the so-called primary 

 rocks of his own Scottish Highlands — a deduction which 

 is, perhaps, destined to bear fruit of which he nevsr 

 dreamed, in the still obscure subject of metamorphism. 



Sir Roderick Murchison's early training in geology was 

 acquired at a time when men believed in periodic cUa- 

 clysms, by which the surface of the globe was destroyed 

 and renewed. He never could, and he never seemed 

 seriously to try, to shake himself free from the influence of 

 that training. Though he modified hi; \iews a; years 

 went on, he remained a member, and indeed in this coun- 

 try the leader, of the Cataclysmic School. The upholJers 

 of a long line of successive creations and of the fornier 

 greater intensity of all geological causes have lost in him 

 one of their ablest, staunchest, and most influential 

 associates. 



To the world at large, however, it was not from his geo- 

 logical work chiefly that Murchison was known. His 



