67 
of Edinburgh, Session 1862 - 63 . 
his daily life are told with characteristic naivete, and are inter- 
spersed in the most natural manner imaginable with a notice of 
what he saw interesting in botany, ornithology, mineralogy, or 
upon other scientific topics, which he evidently felt sure would be 
neither unintelligible nor uninteresting to his correspondent. In 
quitting Arran, he adds the significant remark, ‘‘ Je regrette Arran, 
ou je me suis fait un bien prodigieux.” The later part of the 
season he spent in the Orkney and Shetland Islands, interesting to 
him, as well from the picture of primitive manners which they 
present, as from their remarkable geology. This part of his tour is 
detailed in his letters to Madame Necker; and there is a letter to 
M. Moricand of G-eneva on the geology of the Island of Unst, in 
a subsequent number of the Bihliotheque Universelle. From the 
Shetlands he proceeded to Skye, where he passed the winter of 
1839-40. Here he found so much to interest him geologically, 
and also found the damp but mild climate to suit him so well, that 
he was gradually led to adopt Portree as his permanent abode. 
During his residence in Skye, in the winter of 1839-40, he was, 
I believe, actively engaged in preparing for the press the first 
volume of his Etudes Geologiques dans les Alpes, of which no other 
ever appeared.* He spent the summer of 1^0 at G-eneva, where 
the work was no doubt chiefly written. In the autumn he quitted 
G-eneva, with the deliberate purpose of making Portree his future 
residence. He passed the winter in Paris, seeing his work through 
the press. I find, from a letter to myself, dated at Edinburgh in 
April 1841, that ISTecker was then returning to Sk}^e, having com- 
pleted the printing of his book, which bears date of 1841. 
The Etudes Geologiques form the third of Necker’s separately 
published writings. They were probably expected by the author 
to be, when completed, his best memorial, and the chief contribu- 
tion to science of a lifetime devoted to its pursuit. But the work 
as it stands goes but a little way to realise those reasonable hopes. 
It is but a fragment, and a fragment of which the merits and 
defects are equally characteristic. We find evidence of patient, 
clear-sighted investigation into natural operations which would 
have escaped a less diligent observer, and whose significance a less 
The work itself includes numerous references to his observations in 
Scotland made in 1889. 
