Heroes of science

by P. Martin Duncan

In 1848, the year of revolution in Europe, Murchison enjoyed foreign politics and Alpine geology, and made the acquaintance of most of the young Swiss geologists, whose names are now so celebrated. An essay on the geology of the Alps was written, and our hero received the Copley Medal of the Royal Society. But the many years of close and hard work had told even on Murchison’s iron frame; and his wife was an invalid. So they spent the summer of 1849 at Buxton, much to the disgust of the geologist, however. He attended the meeting of the British Association at Birmingham, however, and relapsed into a state of perpetual “liver,” suppressed gout and “stomach attacks.” After awhile the invalid went abroad and enjoyed rambling over the extinct volcanoes of Auvergne, and had his trip over the same ground twenty-two years before, brought before his mind. But he did not accept the theories of Lyell about the formation of the valleys and the denudation of the district. He stuck, unfortunately, to the violent in nature, and dismissed the truth of the former uniform and slow action of the same forces as now prevail, from his mind. In the next year Murchison was happy again with his old friend Sedgwick, and they geologized in the highlands, and enjoyed the hospitality of the young Duke and Duchess of Argyll. Then the southern uplands of Scotland were examined; and Murchison, stimulated by the great progress of the writings of Lyell, came out in strong opposition to the Huttonian philosophy. Murchison contended in favour of great oscillations and ruptures of the earth’s crust leading to the sudden breaking up and submergence of tracts of land; but he did not explain how all this took place or could take place. He believed in many superficial deposits, such as drift, being the product of violent convulsions and floods. His frame of mind was not difficult to account for. He had found, in investigating the Alps, that movements amongst the strata had occurred on a vast scale, and that whole series of them, hundreds of feet thick, had not only been bent, but positively turned upside down. In 1851 Murchison visited Ireland, and geologized there, and gradually began to complete his great work, entitled “Siluria; or a Description of the Geology of the Silurian Rocks of the World and of their Fossils.” This was published in 1854. The next great act of Murchison’s was the assisting and promoting the success of the geological survey of the United Kingdom, and the establishment of the museum in Jermyn Street. This led to the establishment of the Royal School of Mines. Murchison became the director of the survey, and went into the subject with heart and soul, and found himself surrounded by the most distinguished teachers in England.

Murchison worked personally at the Scottish rocks from 1855 to 1858, and it is a matter of interest that at the present day his admirable work relating to the order of the older rocks is a vexed question. In 1860, Murchison went to the highlands for the fourth time, and came to the same conclusions as before.

Year after year the grand old man laboured on for the benefit of the sciences of geology and geography, and kept the geological survey in capital order. He obtained the sanction of the Government for colonial surveys, and was, in fact, the main stay of science in relation to the state. For ten years he did all this, and occasionally indulged in a trip to the north and west, and also into Bohemia. In 1862, Murchison was terribly troubled by the sudden ill-health of his wife, to whom he owed so much. She became more and more of an invalid, and died in 1869. It was the greatest blow possible, and it brought the kindest letter from his old friend Sedgwick, eighty-four years of age. In September, 1870, Murchison’s time was coming to an end. A slight attack of paralysis warned him to retire from active life. In the spring of 1871 he prepared his last address as president of the Royal Geographical Society, and resigned the chair he had so ably filled for fifteen years. He lingered on, and passed quietly away on October 22nd, 1871, full of years and well merited honours. Murchison’s name will live for ever as a clear, keen-eyed, careful observer of nature, and as a master of the facts relating to much of the ancient history of the earth. He was a great stimulator of men of science, assisted the weak, and helped the good worker. He had a great personal character, religious, honest, truthful, open and generous; he was a gentleman indeed. His biographer, Professor A. Geikie, F.R.S., whose most charming book has been so freely quoted by me, writes about his good old friend as follows: “A man’s face and figure afford usually a good indication of the general calibre of the spirit which lodges beneath them. The picture which rises to the mind when one thinks of Murchison, is that of a tall, wiry, muscular frame, which still kept its erectness even under the burden of almost fourscore years. It seemed the type of body for an active geologist, who had to win his reputation by dint of hard climbing and walking, almost as much as by mental power. It was, moreover, united in his case with a certain pomp and dignity of manner, which at one time recalled the military training of the Peninsula days, at another the formal courtesy of the well-bred gentleman of a bygone generation.”

CHAPTER XIII.
THE LIFE OF LYELL.

The study of existing nature and its changes undertaken in order to comprehend the past changes during geological ages—The uniformity of natural operations under law—Catastrophes abolished—The succession of life on the globe, and that of the tertiary ages explained—The antiquity of man and of the great ice age considered.

Charles Lyell was born in Forfarshire, at Kinnordy, on November 14th, 1797. His father was an able, wealthy, well-educated gentleman; and his mother, a Yorkshire lady, had the usual good sound sense of the women of that county. He was the eldest of ten children, the whole of whom grew up; and he, as is commonly the case in large families, was a good son and brother, and a most independent man in mind and action.

Charles Lyell’s family resided, for years, in the south of England after his birth, and the boy was sent to school early; and in his amusing history of his schoolboy days, which is given in the “Life of Sir Charles Lyell,” edited by his sister-in-law, Mrs. Lyell, he went through all the fun and trouble, the games by day and the bolsterings by night, the keeping of pets, and the petty warfares of the English schoolboy. When eleven years of age, Lyell got into indifferent health at school after measles, and this necessitated his being less pressed at his lessons. He was fond of study, however, and this enforced idleness made him take to some of his father’s amusements, that of entomology.