Very early in 1854 he again left England, in company with Lady Lyell and Mr. and Mrs. Bunbury, to visit Madeira. Some three weeks were devoted to a careful study of the geology of that island,[119] partly with the view of determining whether it afforded any support to Von Buch's favourite notion that volcanic cones were mainly formed by upheaval. As might be anticipated, the evidence was distinctly unfavourable. The island was proved to be mainly composed of volcanic material, cones of basaltic scoria, and great flows of similar lava, which had been piled successively one on another in the open air to a depth of about 4,000 feet. This mass had been subsequently pierced by dykes, worn by storm and stream, and in one or two places deeply grooved by rivers. There were, indeed, some underlying beds of marine origin, which, in one part of the island, rose to a height of 1,200 feet above the sea, and thus indicated a certain amount of upheaval; but even this was not of the kind which Von Buch's hypothesis required, while the rest of the evidence, including that afforded by some tuffs containing fossil plants, proved that the major part of the island had been formed above water. From Madeira they went on to Teneriffe, Palma, and the Grand Canary. Of this part of the journey few details are given, but the results were afterwards incorporated with one of his books.[120] To the Peak of Teneriffe the reference is comparatively brief. Of Palma the account is much fuller, for this island had been regarded by Von Buch, who visited it in 1825, as a type of his "craters of elevation"--an idea which was dispelled by Lyell's investigation. The Grand Canary, like Madeira, proved to be formed of masses of subaërial volcanic rock, perhaps even thicker than those in Madeira, which also rested upon some upraised marine deposits of Miocene age. In the course of 1854 Sir Charles received from his own University the honorary degree of D.C.L. Much time was spent in working up the results of his last journey, some of which were communicated to the Geological Society.[121] In the spring of 1855 he went to the Continent, studying, among other matters, the drifts in the neighbourhood of Berlin. In the summer he visited Scotland, made the acquaintance of Hugh Miller, worked over Arthur's Seat, Blackford Hill, and "the coast of Fife from Kinghorn to Kirkcaldy." It would be hard to find a set of sections better adapted for the study of ancient volcanic rocks, both contemporaneous and intrusive, than this coast affords; and his experience in Madeira and the Canaries enabled him to regard "the Edinburgh and Fife rocks with very different eyes."