lvi PROCEEDINGS OF THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. [March 1913,- 



of making a tour in Iceland and the Faroe Islands proved too 

 tempting to be resisted. On returning from this tour he spent 

 three months in Scotland and England, visiting some of our most 

 important mining districts. He graduated at Bonn in 1861,. 

 making his observations in Iceland the subject of his inaugural 

 dissertation. 



We next find him working for a short time in Vienna, where his 

 first important paper on microscopical petrography was published 

 in 1862. By this time he had recognized the importance of Sorby's 

 researches and the far-reaching possibilities of the new method of 

 investigation. 



In 1863 he became Professor at Lemberg. In 1868 be received 

 a call to Kiel ; and two years later (1870) to Leipzig, as successor 

 to Karl Friedrich Kallmann, the celebrated mineralogist. There he 

 remained for nearly forty years, attracting students from all parts 

 of the world by the excellence of his teaching and the charm of his 

 personality. 



This is not the occasion on which to refer in detail to his 

 numerous original publications ; two may, however, be mentioned, 

 as being of especial interest to British and American geologists. In 

 1868 he made an extensive tour along the western coast of Scotland r 

 visiting Arran, Mull, Iona, Staffa, and Skye, and collecting an ex- 

 tensive series of rocks for more minute study in the laboratory. 

 The results of his observations, in which the microscope was applied 

 to the study of the igneous rocks of that region, were published in 

 1871. Shortly after the appearance of this paper, Zirkel's services 

 were secured by the United States Government for the examination 

 and description of the rocks collected during the Geological Explora- 

 tion of the Fortieth Parallel. This resulted in the publication, in 

 1876, of the large quarto volume on Microscopical Petrography, 

 which forms vol. iv of the Geological Beport by Clarence King. 



The importance of the new method was now recognized all the^ 

 world over, and communications based on it were appearing in the 

 scientific periodicals of many lands. With this rapidly increasing 

 mass of petrological literature Zirkel made himself thoroughly 

 familiar, finally giving to the world the results of his unrivalled- 

 knowledge in the second edition of the ' Lehrbuch' (1893-94), the 

 first edition of which had appeared in 1866. This is an encyclo- 

 paedic work published in three large volumes. 



Although Zirkel is best known as a petrologist, his services to 

 pure mineralogy must not be overlooked. In 1862 he brought out 



