Biographical Sketch of Sir It . I. Murchison, Bart., F.R.8. 483 



lying Silurian systems was made public at the meeting of the British 

 Association for the Advancement of Science in 1831, but his great 

 ■work did not appear until 1839. 



Further geographical investigations in Devon and Cornwall fol- 

 lowed, in which Professor Sedgwick took part, and in 1835 and 

 1839, two journeys were performed by Sedgwick and Murchison to 

 the Ehenish Provinces ; on the latter occasion M. de Verneuil also 

 accompanied them. The result of these researches, and comparison 

 of the English Devonians with those of Ehenish Prussia, was pub- 

 lished in 1839, and a final classification adopted. 



In 1840, accompanied by De Verneuil, Murchison visited Eussia, 

 at that period but very little known geologically. 



They examined the banks of the rivers Volkoff" and Siass, and the 

 shores of Lake Onega, thence to Archangel and the borders of the 

 White Sea, and followed the river Dwina in the government of 

 Vologda. They traversed the Volga and returned by Moscow to St. 

 Petersburg, examining the Valdai Hills, Lake Ilmen, and the banks 

 of the rivers which they passed. They then returned to England, 

 but having been invited by the late Emperor Nicholas to superintend 

 a Geological Survey of Eussia, the two geologists returned to St. 

 Petersburg in the spring of 1841, and being joined by Count Key- 

 serling and Lieutenant Kokscharow, they proceeded to explore the 

 Ural Mountains, the Southern Provinces of the Empire and the Coal 

 Districts between the Dneiper and the Don. In 1842 Murchison 

 travelled alone through several parts of Germany, Poland, and the 

 Carpathian Mountains, the better to understand the relations of the 

 great formations to each other over wide areas. In 1844 he ex- 

 plored the Paleeozoic rocks of Sweden and Norway. In 1845-6 he 

 completed his great joint work on " The Geology of Eussia and the 

 Ural Mountains," in two quarto volumes of 700 and 600 pages, 

 copiously illustrated with maps, sections, and plates of fossils. 

 Not long after the publication of this work, Mr. Murchison was 

 knighted by Her Majesty, the Emperor having previously conferred 

 several Eussian orders on him, including that of St. Stanislaus. In 

 1849 he received the Copley medal from the Eoyal Society, in re- 

 cognition of his having established the Silurian system in geology. 



His researches (extending over six visits) in the Alps, Apennines, 

 and Carpathian mountains, established the fact of a graduated tran- 

 sition from Secondary to Tertiary rocks, and clearly separates the 

 great Nummulitic formation from the Cretaceous formations with 

 which it was confounded. 



Eanking next in importance to his definition of the Silurian 

 System was his differentiation of the Permians. Having satisfied 

 himself that the Lower New Eed Sandstone, and the Magnesian 

 Limestone and Marl Slates constituted one natural group only, which, 

 from their organic contents, must be entirely separated from the 

 overlying formations, he proposed, in 1841, that the group should 

 receive the name of the "Permian" system, from Perm, a Russian 

 Government, where these strata are more extensively developed 

 than elsewhere, occupying an area twice the size of France, and con- 



