Mrs. Murchison specially devoted herself to the collection of fossils, and to sketching the more striking geological features of the coast-line, while her husband would push on to make some long and laborious detour. In this way, while she remained quietly working at Lyme Regis, he struck westward for a fortnight into Devon and Cornwall, to make his first acquaintance with the rocks to which, in after years, Sedgwick and he were to give the name by which they are now recognized all over the world. It was in the course of this tour that he met with a man, whom he has the merit of having brought into notice, and who certainly amply requited him by the services rendered in later years. William Lonsdale had served in the Peninsular war, and retired on half-pay to Bath. With the most simple and abstemious habits, his slender income sufficed not only for his wants, but for the purchase of any book or fossil he coveted, and so he spent his time in studying the organic remains, and especially the fossil corals, to be found in his neighbourhood. Murchison met him accidentally in some quarries, “a tall, grave man, with a huge hammer on his shoulder,” and found him so full of information, that he stayed some days at Bath under Lonsdale’s guidance. With the enlargement of view which so instructive a ramble had given him, Murchison prepared and read to the Geological Society, on 16th December, 1825, his first scientific paper—“A Geological Sketch of the North-western Extremity of Sussex, and the adjoining parts of Hants and Surrey.” This little essay bore manifest evidence of being the result of careful observation of the order of succession of the rocks in the field, followed by as ample examination of their fossils as he could secure, from those best qualified to give an opinion upon them. In these respects it was typical of all his later work. Having shown by this first publication his capacity as observer and describer, and being further recommended by the leisure which his position of independence enabled him to command, he was soon after elected one of the two honorary secretaries of the Geological Society. “Lyell being then a law-student, with chambers in the Temple, could only devote a portion of his time to our science, and was glad to make way as secretary to one who, like myself, had nothing else to do than think and dream of geology, and work hard to get on in my new vocation.” In the spring of 1826 he was elected into the Royal Society—an honour more easily won then than now, and for which, as the President, his old friend Sir Humphry Davy told him, he was indebted, not to the amount or value of his scientific work, but to the fact that he was an independent gentleman, having a taste for science, with plenty of time, and enough of money to gratify it.