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.” [Illustration] [Illustration] CHAPTER XIII. THE LIFE OF LYELL.