61 
of Edinburgh, Session 186 * 2 - 63 . 
within which his special journey was confined, making elaborate 
notes and drawings on the spot, which he inked in at leisure, thus 
accumulating a mass of authentic and valuable details, of which 
unfortunately but a very small part ever saw the light.* The 
environs of Geneva and the important and intricate country between 
its lake and the bases of Mont Blanc, formed the most frequent 
scene of his geological labours. In 1826 he made a special study 
of the Valley of Valorsine (near Chamouni), with its interesting 
granite veins and pudding-stones. It may be conceived with what 
interest he compared the former traces of the vast upheaving forces 
which raised the Alps, with those which he had sedulously ex- 
amined nearly twenty years before in the Isle of Arran. 
But his researches were far from confined to his own district of 
Switzerland and Savoy. He had previously visited the Eastern 
Alps, including the environs of Trieste, and a great extent of 
country then almost unknown to geologists, extending southwards 
nearly to Dalmatia, and northwards to Vienna. Family affairs 
in part, I believe, directed his course to Trieste, and the visit was 
repeated for some consecutive years. To connect his studies in 
the East with those in the Western Alps, he undertook in 1828 a 
special journey, which lasted from May to September, of part of 
which he published a brief account (Etudes Geologiques, Preface, 
and Bihl. Univ., Oct. 1829). This last is a paper on the inter- 
esting hypersthenic syenite of the Valteline. He started by the 
Tarentaise, Little St Bernard, and Val d’Aoste, by Val Sesia, along 
the whole series of the Italian lakes to the Vicentin, and thence 
to Belluno a Pieve di Cadore, from whence he reached Trieste by 
the Valley of the Tagliamento. He thence traversed Carniola and 
Carinthia, entering the Tyrol near Fassa, and pursuing his route 
by the Stelvio and Valteline, until he regained his former track at 
Como. In 1829, or subsequently, he returned once again with 
admirable perseverance to the Alps of Carniola, and those of Istria 
As an example, I may mention that soon after M. Favre’s interesting 
paper had appeared in 1848, on the Geology of Chamouni, in which he 
announces the interesting fact that the summit of the Aiguille Kouge is 
composed of lias in horizontal strata, being at Portree, I mentioned the fact 
to M. Necker, who thereupon speedily turned up in his old Alpine notes a 
section of the Aiguille Eouge clearly expressing the same fact. 
VOL. V. 
1 
