Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 39.djvu/325

 between the carboniferous and Silurian, and so equivalent to the old red sandstone, and the two friends in 1839 visited Germany and the Boulonnais to obtain further confirmation of their views.

In this year Murchison's social influence was increased by an augmentation of fortune, which enabled him to move to a house in Belgrave Square, his residence for the rest of his life, which became a meeting-place for workers of science with those otherwise distinguished. H e also planned a visit to Russia, in which country the palseozoic rocks were comparatively undisturbed, and so presented fewer difficulties than they did in Britain. Accompanied by De Verneuil, and greatly aided by the officials and savants of Russia, Murchison crossed the northern part of that country to the shores of the White Sea, and thence up the Dwina to Nijni Novgorod, Moscow, and back to St. Petersburg. In the following summer the two travellers returned to Moscow, and, after examining the carboniferous rocks in the neighbourhood, struck off for the Ural Mountains, followed them southwards to Orsk, thence westward to the Sea of Azof, and so back to Moscow. After a third visit to St. Petersburg by way of Scandinavia and Finland, besides travel at home as usual, the important work on 'The Geology of Russia and the Ural Mountains,' by Murchison, Von Keyserling, and De Verneuil, was published in April 1845.

Honours other than scientific now began to come in. From the emperor of Russia he had already received the orders of St. Anne and of Stanislaus, and in February 1846 he was knighted. In 1843 he was elected president of the Geographical Society, an office which henceforth somewhat diverted his attention from geology. Still the old love was not forgotten. His summer journeys continued, and from July 1847 to September 1848 Sir Roderick and Lady Murchison, partly on account of her health, were on the continent, revisiting Rome, Naples, and the Eastern Alps. This journey had for its result an important paper on the geological structure of the Alps, Apennines, and Carpathians (Quarterly Journal Geological Society, v. 157). Auvergne also was revisited in 1850. Murchison for some time had been occupied in recasting the 'Silurian System' into a more convenient form, and the new book, under the title 'Siluria,' appeared in 1854.

The following year brought an important change in Murchisou's life, for on the death Sir H. De la Beche [q. v.] he was appointed director-general of the geological survey. The same summer also witnessed the beginning of a new piece of work, the attempt to unravel the complicated structure of the Scottish highlands. A journey undertaken in 1858 with C. Peach [q. v.] made it clear that the Torridon sandstone of the north-western highlands was much less ancient than a great series of coarse gneissose rocks, to which Murchison gave the name of fundamental gneiss, afterwards identifying it with the Laurentian gneiss of North America. The Torridon sandstone afforded no traces of life, but it was followed by quartzoles and limestones, then supposed to be, from their fossils, lower Silurian age, but now placed low in the Cambrian, and above these, in apparent sequence, came a series of crystalline schists less coarse grained, and with a more stratified aspect than the 'fundamental gneiss.' Of these schists much of the central highlands and the southern part of the north-western were evidently composed. Murchison, then, regarded these as Silurian strata altered by metamorphism. Professor J. Nicol [q. v.], who had been at first associated with Murchison, dissented from this view, maintaining these schists to be really part of the fundamental gneiss, brought up by faulting. Murchison accordingly revisited the highlands in 1859 with Professor Alexander Ramsay [q.v.], and in 1860 with Mr. A. Geikie, and returned more than ever convinced of the accuracy of his view, which was maintained in a joint paper read to the Geological Society early in 1861. But Professor Nicol, as time has shown, in the main was right.

This highland tour closed the more active part of Murchison's life. Afterwards he made no lengthy journey, though he visited various localities in Britain, and even went to Germany in order to investigate questions which arose out of his former work. Much time also was occupied by his official labours at Jermyn Street, and by other duties arising from his position and his general interest in scientific affairs. After 1864 he wrote few more papers, but continued president of the Geographical Society, and gave an annual address till 1871. Early in 1869 Lady Murchison died, after an illness of some duration, In November 1870 he was struck by paralysis. From this he partially recovered, but during the later part of the following summer the malady began to make marked progress, and his life was closed by an attack of bronchitis on 22 Oct. 1871. Four days afterwards he was laid in Brompton cemetery by his wife's side.

Murchison could not complain that his merits were unrecognised. Besides the distinctions mentioned above, and valuable presents from the czar of Russia, he was made a K.C.B. in 1863, and a baronet in 1866. He