54 



BIOGRAPHICAL NOTICE OF SIR RODERICK MURCHISON. 



[1854. 



scrling and Lieutenant Kolcsharof, tliey j)roceeded to explore 

 tlie Ural Mountains, tlie southern jjrovinces of tlie empire, and 

 tlie coal districts between the Dnieper and the Don. In order 

 to render his great work on Eastern Europe as perfect as 

 possible, our author alone travelled, in 1842, through several 

 parts of Germany, Poland, and the Carpathian Mountains ; and 

 with the same objects in view, he explored successfully, in the 

 summer of 1844, the Palasozoio formations of Sweden and 

 Norway. He afterwards re-vi.sited St. Petersburg, and after 

 communicating with Count Keyserling en the subject of the 

 Petchora and Timan country, which had been explored by that 

 geologist, and examining some newly-discovered natural relations 

 of the strata, not very distant from the capital, he returned to 

 England, and completed in 1845, rn conjunction with M. de 

 Verneuil, that magnificent work on the geology of Russia and 

 the Ural Mountains, of which we have given a full account in 

 a preceding article. 



Before quitting our enumeration of the geological works of 

 Sir Roderick Murchison which preceded the one now under 

 review, we must notice his remarkable treatise on the Alps, 

 Appennines, and Carpathians, publislied by the Geographical 

 Society, in which, after visiting the Alps for the sixth time, he 

 clearly separated the great Nummulite formation from the 

 chalk and other cretaceous deposits with which it had been 

 confounded. This treatise was translated and published in 

 Professor Savi and Menegheiri's work entitled Le, Alpi et gli 

 Apennini, in which they adopt the general views of the Eng- 

 lish geologists, and append to it the details of their own 

 observations on the geology of Tuscany. In addition to the 

 works we have enumerated, Mr. Murchison has published 

 upwards of a hundred memoirs, a list of which will be found 

 in the Bihliographia of Agassiz, published by the late Mr. 

 Hugh Strickland. 



But it is not merely by his geological discoveries and 

 writings that Sir Roderick Murchison has earned the gratitude 

 of his country and his reputation in the world of science. 

 After having for five years discharged the arduous duties of 

 secretary to the Geological Society, he filled the office of presi- 

 dent in the years 183i and 1832, and 1842 and 1843. When 

 the British Association assembled at York for the finst time in 

 1831, he was one of the few geologists that responded to the 

 invitation of its founder, and fully appreciating the value of 

 such an institution, he discharged the arduous duties of general 

 secretary for several years, and was president of the Southamp- 

 ton Meeting in 1846. In the important discussions which 

 took place in the geological section he took an active part ; he 

 communicated many important papers to its different meetings, 

 and at Ipswich in 1851 he succeeded in establishing the new 

 section of physical geography, ethnology, and philology, thus 

 removing geography from the geological section, in which it 

 was overborne by more popular topics of discussion. 



Not less important have been the services of Sir Roderick 

 to the Royal Geographical Society, now one of the most popu- 

 lar and flourishing institutions in the kingdom. When the 

 Society was not in its most active state, he was raised to its 

 presidency in 1844, am? vras re-elected in 1845; and the 

 energy and talent which he displayed in promoting the objects 

 of the Society are sufficiently shown in the two printed annual 

 addresses which it is the duty of the president to deliver. At 

 that time the Society had no house of their own, no suitable 

 apartments for the reception of their numerous collections of 

 maps and charts ; and hence during the year of the Great Ex- 

 hibition, in 1851, when the Emperor of Austria presented to 



it the valuable framed maps which were exhibited in the Crys- 

 tal Palace, no other place could be found for them than the 

 walls of the staircase which led to their small meeting room. — 

 This was not the proper condition of a society which bore the 

 name of lioijcd, and adjudged annually two royal medals; and 

 the indifl'erence of British Ministers to the interests of science, 

 even when the nation derives from it the most palpable advan- 

 tages, is well displayed in their treatment of this most useful 

 institution. Sir Roderick Murchison had in 1844 and 1845, 

 failed in obtaining from Sir Robert Peel any pecuniary aid, and 

 when, during his second presidency in 1852, he made a new 

 appeal to the nation, he might have equally failed, had he not 

 proposed that the Society should repay any obligation conferred 

 upon it by the Government, by "rendering one of its rooms a 

 map office of the British nation, in which all persons might 

 have access to maps, charts, and plans, many thousands in 

 number." This appeal to the utilitarian conscience succeeded, 

 and we believe that it was chiefly through the exertions of Mr. 

 Joseph Hume that the sum of £500 was wrested from the 

 national purse, never closed but against sciencCj to enable the 

 Geographical Society to receive presents from foreign sove- 

 rsigns, and cany on researches honorable to the nation, and 

 subservient to the highest interests of its trade and commerce. 

 We have reason to believe that Sir Robert Peel was ashamed 

 of his illiberality to the Geographical Society. We know at 

 least that after he had ass^iated, as he did in the latter part of 

 his life, with many of onr most distinguished men of science, 

 he did more to promote its interests than all the ministers that 

 preceded him, and all those, too, that have followed him as 

 advisers of the Grown. Had his valuable life been spared, the 

 science of England would have wanted neither money fi'om the 

 Treasury to advance its interests, nor honours from the Crown 

 to reward and stimulate its cultivators. His successors have 

 yet to learn as he did, the national value of education and 

 knowledge, and recjuire to be taught that if they have not the 

 liberality to foster and extend the educational institutions of 

 the country, it is at least their duty to maintain them, and 

 especially those of Scotland, of which her Majesty is the visitor, 

 in the possession of their original endowments. 



Among the other servicjes to his country, and one for which 

 his native Scotland owes him peculiar obligations, we must not 

 omit the great and successful exertions which he made to pro- 

 mote the Ordnance Survey of Scotland. While £850,000 was 

 expended on the Ordnance Survey of Ireland, in procuring 

 for that country a magnificent map on the scale of six inches to 

 a mile, almost nothing was done for the map of Scotland, 

 though the survey of the country commenced in the last cen- 

 tury. Humiliated by the reflection that Scotland stands almost 

 alone in Europe as a kingdom without a good general map, and 

 experiencing how much geologists and engineers were per- 

 plexed by the want of such an auxiliary in their researches, 

 Sir Roderick roused the ]3ublic attention to the fact in 1834. — 

 The British association in 1834 presented to Government a 

 memorial on the subject, which was printed in 1835 by order 

 of the House of Commons ; and the Royal Highland Society 

 and other public bodies, seconded their exertions. The apathy 

 of the Government, however, to everything like science, and 

 especially to Scottish interests, was not overcome even by their 

 powerful influence; and a fresh agitation in 1850 was required 

 to awaken the Scottish members to a due sense of the interests 

 which they had unwarrantably neglect and obtained from a 

 reluctant Legislature the necessary means for carrying on and 

 completing the survey of Scotland.* A grant of £25,000, and 

 * See Norlh British Review. Edinburo;!! edition, vol 



