664 J. W. JTJDD ON TELE SECONDAKY BOOKS OF SCOTLAND. 



spoken of in a tone of disparagement, but even his veracity has been 

 called in question. In a subsequent page in this memoir I shall 

 show that the circumstances on which this particular and most 

 serious attack is based have been altogether misunderstood ; and I 

 here state my conviction — a conviction arrived at after many years 

 of labour in the same field — that the charges brought against 

 Macculloch by several of his countrymen have no real foundation. 

 Macculloch's rhetorical and inflated style of writing may be objected 

 to as being little suited for scientific description ; his unfounded pre- 

 judices, his bitterness in controversy, and his want of amiability may 

 be equally regretted; while every one must lament that one so 

 gifted should during the later years of his life have wronged science 

 and his own reputation by taking up a position of sullen isolation, 

 and by refusing to recognize the value or accommodate himself to the 

 requirements of rapidly growing knowledge. But every member of 

 this Society will rejoice if the able geologist who took so prominent 

 a part in its first establishment, and one of whose papers was the 

 first thought worthy of the honour of publication in our Transac- 

 tions, he who was the first to secure government aid to our science in 

 Britain, and to establish and carry out single-handed a geological 

 survey of the northern part of the kingdom, can be acquitted — as 

 I believe he can be — of the very serious charges which have been 

 brought against him. 



Any one who will try to realize the difficulties under which 

 Macculloch laboured — the want of any thing approaching to accurate 

 maps and charts, the difficulties of travel in these stormy seas before 

 they had been comparatively opened up by the introduction of steam- 

 vessels, and the imperfection of geological knowledge at the early 

 date at which his researches were carried on — and then candidly 

 examine the ' Description of the Western Isles/ must, I think, be 

 filled with admiration for the energy and genius of its author. JSTor 

 can we forget that in citing the name of Macculloch we furnish 

 some reply — alas, almost the only one possible — to the charges so 

 often brought against our native geologists by foreigners, of contempt 

 for, and actual injury done, to the Petrographical branch of our 

 science. 



Macculloch, like Dr. Johnson, has been made the victim of the 

 resentment of a generous but over -sensitive race, which seems to 

 have expected, from one with whom they claimed ties of kindred, 

 unsparing flattery instead of honest criticism. With this cause of 

 quarrel against Macculloch we have, however, nothing to do ; suffice 

 it for us if his scientific honour and veracity be vindicated. 



The publication of Murchison's two papers on the strata of the 

 Oolitic series in the Hebrides* forms an important epoch in the 

 progress of our knowledge of the rocks treated of in the present 



* " On the Coal-field of Brora, Sutherlandshire, and some of the Stratified 

 Deposits in the North of Scotland," Trans. Geol. Soc. 2nd ser. vol. ii. p. 292; 

 and " Supplementary Remarks on the Strata of the Oolitic Series and the Rocks 

 associated with them, in the counties of Sutherland and Ross and in the He- 

 brides," ibid. p. 353. 



