xxxiv Obituary Notices of Fellows deceased. 



below and the Silurian above. Thus he earned the grateful thanks of 

 geologists of his own and later times, for a work which could onl}^ have been 

 done by one of his great knowledge, and which would never have been 

 accepted but for the respect in which its author was held, and the 

 knowledge, skill, and tact with which he stated his case. 



The fourth piece of work, which will always be associated with Lapworth's 

 name, was to overcome the great stratigraphical difficulties which had 

 led to a mis-reading of the complicated sections of Lower Palaeozoic and 

 Eozoic rocks in the North-west Highlands of Scotland. Sir Jethro Teall, 

 who (one of very few) had the advantage of seeing Lapworth's methods of 

 work in this region, and who afterwards studied the petrology of the 

 Highland rocks and took part in the publication of the ' Geological Survey 

 Memoir,' has been so good as to furnish the following account of the 

 Highland work : — 



I have been asked to say something about Lapworth's work in the 

 north-west of Scotland, and I do so with great pleasure as it was my good 

 fortune to spend a day or two with him in Eriboll in 1883. But before 

 describing what was to me a memorable experience, it will be necessary 

 to give a brief account of the situation as it stood when he first visited 

 the district in 1882, and of his work in that year. 



Having established the principles by which the complicated strati- 

 graphy of the Southern Uplands could be interpreted, and applied those 

 principles with brilliant success to the Moffat and Girvan areas, he felt 

 free to turn his attention to the Durness-Eriboll region, where Lower 

 Palaeozoic rocks were also known to occur. In the fifties and sixties of 

 last century, a keen controversy had arisen between Sir Eoderic 

 Murchison and Prof. Mcol of Aberdeen, concerning the relation of these 

 fossiliferous rocks to the " Eastern Schists " of Sutherland and Koss. 

 According to Murchison there was a gradual upward passage from 

 fossiliferous strata to the crystalline schists, whereas Nicol maintained 

 that the superposition had been brought about by faulting and that the 

 highly metamorphosed " Eastern Schists " were older than the compara- 

 tively unaltered sediments — not younger as Murchison supposed. 



This controversy had recently been revived by Hicks, Callaway, 

 Bonney, and others, and although much new light had been thrown on 

 the subject, the problem had not been definitely solved. The fact that 

 previous observers had arrived at diverse conclusions, for even the 

 opponents of the Murchisonian view were not agreed on all points, 

 convinced Lapworth that some secret lay hidden in the district ; and so, 

 equipped with the six-inch Ordnance maps, with a knowledge of 

 mountain structure derived partly from his own work in the Southern 

 Uplands and partly from the work of Eogers in the Alleghanies, Heim 

 in the Alps, and others, but above all with his own genius, skill, and 

 enthusiasm, he set to work on his self-imposed task. 



