handled. The Annali d'Italia gives him a permanent place amongst historians. In him Thomas Burnet, Tillotson, and Barbeyrac met with an opponent. He wrote against Pyrrhonism and Socinianism, discussed questions of ecclesiastical discipline, upheld the infallibility of mother church, and the absolute truth of holy scripture; treated of christian charity as concerning the love of our neighbour; under the feigned name of Antonio Lampridio put forth his "De superstitione vitanda;" compiled biographies of various noteworthy men; investigated the motive of Torquato Tasso's incarceration; set forth the powers of human fancy; defined good taste; and propounded his own views of the appropriate treatment, political, medical, and ecclesiastical, of the plague. Besides some verses from his pen, we have his "Delia Perfetta Poesia Italiana;" but of the probable value of his poetico-critical acumen one cannot but admit doubts, remembering that in spite of ardent admiration for Dante, he is said to have cherished a preference for Petrarca. As concerns art, he indignantly repelled the popular notion that the Goths were its foes and destroyers; appealing in support of his position to the magnificent structures raised by Theodoric, and to the letters of Cassiodorus.—C. G. R.
MURCHISON, Sir Roderick Impey, F.R.S., D.C.L., was born at Taradale in Ross-shire in 1792. He was the eldest son of Kenneth Murchison, Esq., of Taradale. His mother was the sister of General Sir Alexander Mackenzie, Bart., G.C.H. He received his early education at Durham grammar-school, and afterwards became a student at the military college at Marlow. In 1807 he entered the army. He served with the 36th foot in Spain and Portugal, afterwards on the staff of his uncle. Sir Alexander Mackenzie, and finally held a captain's commission in the 6th dragoons. In 1815 he married the only daughter of General Hugonin, and in the following year quitted the army. After leaving the public service, he appears to have concentrated his attention on geology; and for the last quarter of a century the personal history of Sir Roderick Murchison has been intimately associated with the progress of geological science. The labours of none have been more unremitting, nor have any been more successful in throwing light upon the histories of past ages afforded by the stratified and fossiliferous rocks. To his sagacity and perseverance science is mainly indebted for the investigation of the strata of rocks which he under the Devonian, or old red sandstone; and to him she owes the application of those principles of classification founded on the succession of organic life, which had been previously established with regard to the tertiary and secondary periods, to the palæozoic or oldest strata in which the remains of animals have been discovered. His papers in the publications of the Geological Society of London appear to have commenced in 1826, when he was secretary to that society. In 1830 he visited the Eastern Alps for the purpose of elucidating their geological structure, and in an elaborate paper he communicated the results of his investigations to the London Society. He succeeded Professor Sedgwick as president of the Geological Society in 1831; and about the same time he commenced an examination of Wales and the bordering counties which occupied him during the succeeding eight years, and enabled him to arrive at conclusions of the highest importance. Before the results of his investigations were given to the world, nothing was known of the detailed sequence and characteristic fossils of the strata which underlie the old red sandstone; and in reference to that formation geologists were only aware that it formed the basis on which rested the carboniferous limestone, and that it contained some undescribed fossil fishes. Not only was there complete ignorance as to the more ancient primary strata; but many rocks which are now known to be younger than the Silurian were supposed to be of greater antiquity. It was by Dr. Buckland's advice that Murchison attempted the investigation of the more ancient palæozoic strata by an exploration of the banks of the Wye between Hay and Builth. He found a considerable tract in Hereford, Radnor, and Shropshire, where large masses of grey-coloured strata, containing fossils differing from those which occur in deposits above them, rise out from amongst the old red sandstone. These he began to classify; and after four years of labour he erected them into a group to which he assigned the name Silurian, derived from the ancient Silures, a people who formerly inhabited the region explored, and under their king Caractacus offered a gallant resistance to the Roman arms. A patriotic feeling led to the choice of a designation which is now appropriated to science throughout the civilized world; for in a note to one of his published addresses to the Geological Society, Sir Roderick writes—"When Ostorius, the Roman general, conquered Caractacus, he boasted that he had blotted out the very name Silures from the face of the earth. A British geologist had therefore some pride in restoring to currency the word Silurian as connected with great glory in the annals of his country." He soon after separated the Silurian strata into a lower and upper group, and in 1839 published his investigations and their results under the title of the "Silurian System." At the time of its publication the author, in common with Professor Sedgwick, was under the conviction that the fossiliferous rocks of North Wales, to which the term "Cambrian" has been applied, were inferior to, and therefore of an earlier antiquity than the lower Silurian. Subsequent investigations, however, proved the identity of the fossils in the Cambrian strata with those of the Silurian period, and the conclusion was at length arrived at, that the former were extensions of the Silurian strata. This conclusion Sir Roderick has maintained in his subsequent publications; and for his labours thus completed and corrected, he received in 1849 the highest distinction which the Royal Society can bestow—that of the Copley medal. During the period he was engaged on his great work, he published a short treatise on the geology of the neighbourhood of Cheltenham. Soon after the appearance of the "Silurian System," its author was engaged with Professor Sedgwick and M. De Verneuil in unravelling the structure of the Rhenish provinces; but a wider field of geological labour awaited his enterprise. It had been generally held by geologists that the red strata of some of the provinces of Russia, e.g., Novogorod, Lithuania, and Courland belonged to the new red sandstone. This error arose partly from the non-recognition of the fossils contained in the strata, which were supposed to be bones of Saurian and Chelonian reptiles. The mistake was dissipated by the publication of the "Silurian System," for by its perusal scientific men in Russia were led to the belief that the red strata covering their Silurian deposits, were characterized by fossil fishes identical with those of the British old red sandstone, which had been hitherto mistaken for the reliquiæ of reptiles and tortoises. This conclusion was arrived at by M. Von Buch, to whom the fossils had been sent, and who communicated to Murchison his conviction that an investigation of Russia would demonstrate the same sequence of palæozoic deposits, as had been described in the Silurian region of England and Wales. On the impulse thus given, Murchison resolved to undertake the geological survey of Russia. For this undertaking he obtained the countenance of the imperial government through Baron de Brunnow, the Russian ambassador, and having secured the companionship and co-operation of M. de Verneuil, a naturalist well known for his acquaintance with fossil mollusca, he commenced his expedition and arrived at the Neva early in the summer of 1840. The greater part of the north of Russia in Europe was explored, the survey extending from Archangel and the borders of the White Sea on the north to Moscow in the south, and to the heart of the government of Vologda on the east The result of this exploration was to place beyond doubt the chief physical relations of the palæozoic rocks of the northern and central provinces; it moreover elucidated the nature of the chief rocks round Moscow, showing that they were not, as had been supposed, of the oolitic series, but that they belonged to the carboniferous era. On Mr. Murchison's return to England he exhibited a geological map of the regions examined to the British Association, and in the name of M. de Verneuil and of himself, read a memoir on their discoveries to the Geological Society of London. But much remained to be done before the geology of Russia could be completely systematized. The government of the Emperor Nicholas was aware of the importance of the investigations which Mr. Murchison and his companion had commenced; and soon after the termination of their expedition, a communication from the imperial government was received by the former, the object of which was to obtain the services of himself and M. de Verneuil in making an additional geological survey. Associated with Murchison and De Verneuil in this undertaking, were Count Keyserling and Lieut. Koksharof. The expedition commenced in the spring of 1841, and during the succeeding summer the Ural mountains, the southern provinces of Russia, and particularly the coal-field of the Donetz, were explored. It was after the termination of this survey, when Murchison was engaged in working out the results of the labours of himself and his associates, that he proposed the name Permian,
