His life, written by his distinguished relation the late Professor John Phillips, F.R.S. of Oxford, has been the source of these pages. William Smith’s portrait hangs in the most distinguished position, over the president’s chair at the Geological Society of London. He was a great genius, and suffered much toil and poverty, in order to produce the truth; but he led a very happy life on the whole for his thoughts about nature were his great and good riches. He proved that there is a regular succession of strata which are characterized by their fossils, each stratum being the burial ground of its time of collection. [Illustration] CHAPTER XII. THE LIFE OF MURCHISON. The older rocks of the globe studied accurately and surveyed—The general similarity of the succession of strata in many parts of the world decided—The geology of Wales and Scotland described—The commencement of accurate geological surveys. Roderick Impey Murchison was the descendant of a very old Rossshire family, who were great supporters of the Stuarts in the wild western country of the north of Scotland. His great-grandfather fell at Sheriffmuir, and his grandfather, a tenant farmer, had to struggle with slender means during a long life. But long before this fine old man died, at the age of ninety-nine, he saw the fortunes of his family retrieved by his eldest son, whom he outlived. This son, Roderick Impey Murchison’s father, was born in 1751, and, thanks to the cheap and good education which was to be got at Edinburgh and Glasgow, he became a surgeon. Passing the examination at the Royal College of Surgeons in England, the young man was sent out to India, and living at Lucknow for seventeen years, made a fortune. He came home to the old country, and bought the estate of Tarradale, in the eastern part of Ross, kept up the old Highland customs, and made himself useful as a medical man when aid was required. He married, in 1791, the daughter of Mackenzie, of Fairburn, lineal representative of the Rory More, or Big Roderick Mackenzie, to whom the estates had been granted by James V. Their younger son, Roderick Impey was born in February, 1792, and was reared by the “sonsie” miller’s wife of Tarradale, who hushed him to sleep with gaelic lullabies, and gave him an occasional taste of the famous whiskey distilled on the adjacent lands of Ferrintosh. But the father got delicate and moved to the south, carrying with him his household. On the way an end nearly came to the future geologist, for his father, wishing to make the boy “stand fire,” presented what was thought an empty pistol at him. The mother snatched the child away, and instantly a charge of shot rattled through the window. The father died when Murchison was only four years of age, and the boy wrote in after years his sad memory of the last of his father: “The opening of the red damask curtains of the lofty old-fashioned bed, the last kiss of my dying