Abstract
UPWARDS of a year ago we duly chronicled the founding of a chair of geology and mineralogy in the University of Edinburgh by Sir Roderick Murchison, and we augured that the munificence of the founder would not be long in bearing fruit. It is pleasant to learn that the first session has been concluded successfully, and that the class has been greatly larger than the most sanguine friends of geology in Scotland had anticipated. In addition to the ordinary lectures of the class-room, there have been frequent afternoon excursions to the field, where the principles of the science have been learnt in a way in which they cannot be from mere lectures or books. Edinburgh is peculiarly favoured by nature for instruction of this practical kind. The crags and ravines which surround, or even stand in the midst of, the streets and gardens furnish admirable models of many of the more important and striking facts of physical geology. These advantages have been fully made use of during the past winter and spring. There has been, we are told, a brisk sale of geological hammers, and bands of hammerers have been seen on Saturday afternoons wandering over hillside and quarry. At the close of the session Prof. Geikie and his students celebrated the termination of their labours together by a week's holiday in the island of Arran. For such an excursion good weather is the first grand essential, and in this respect the party appears to have been singularly lucky. The days were bright and bracing, so that from the highest hill tops the eye could wander over all the wide expanse of firth and fell which lies between the mountains of Jura and the far-off faintly-seen uplands of Galloway.
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The Murchison Chair of Geology . Nature 6, 84–85 (1872). https://doi.org/10.1038/006084a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/006084a0