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Proceedings of the Royal Society 
had his attention specially directed to geological pursuits, and the 
influence thus communicated moulded all his after life. His first 
paper, published when he was twenty-seven years of age, was a 
speculative one, on the climate of the coal epoch, and contained 
ideas which have been adopted by some subsequent writers. A 
second paper, on changes in the temperature of the earth as a mode 
of accounting for the subsidence of the ocean, and for the con- 
sequent formation of sea-beaches above its present level, was read 
by him in the same year before the Geological Society of London. 
But in spite of this early promise of activity in theoretical geology, 
it was as a sedulous worker in the field that he distinguished himself. 
Though he made occasional geological excursions in Lancashire and 
Cheshire, he spent most of his early years in laborious traverses of 
the south of Scotland, exploring the old reptiliferous sandstones of 
Nithsdale and Annandale, the Carboniferous Limestone as it is de- 
veloped in Dumfriesshire, and more particularly the Lower Silurian 
formations which stretch from the coast of Berwickshire to that of 
Wigtown. To his minute observations we owe the first outline of 
the general structure of the Silurian uplands of the south of Scot- 
land. He followed the graptolite hands from valley to valley, and 
from parish to parish, and showed how they could he used as horizons 
to determine the succession of deposits in that difficult region. 
In the year 1853 he was appointed to the Chair of Geology in 
Queen’s College, Cork — an office which he held till his death. His 
residence in Ireland enabled him to bring the same diligent zeal to 
hear on the investigation of the geology of that island. From time 
to time he made valuable contributions to our knowledge of Irish 
geology, one of the most important being the paper which he wrote 
in the year 1860, on the metamorphic rocks of the north of Ireland, 
wherein he drew a parallel between the quartz-rocks, limestones, 
and associated rocks of Donegal and those of the west of Scotland. 
But he continued to devote much time to field-work in the north of 
England, and in Scotland. There is hardly a district which he did 
not explore ; and though he did not always publish his observations, 
the number of his communications to the scientific journals of the 
day hears witness to his unwearied activity. He made himself the 
best authority of his time in the palaeontology and stratigraphy of 
the Lake District and of Dumfriesshire. 
