Abstract In 1828, Charles Lyell (1797–1875), Charlotte Murchison (1788–1869) and her husband Roderick Impey Murchison (1792–1871) embarked on a long journey around Europe. The party left Paris in May 1828, travelled through the Massif Central and continued southwards. The geological programme was dedicated to stratigraphical and geomorphological observations, but sightseeing was not neglected. Published papers by Lyell and Roderick Murchison report their scientific results, but it is the unpublished journals, notebooks and letters, which illuminated their research programmes, task management and daily routine. There was an effective division of labour, which increased the scientific productivity of the trio. Lyell and Roderick Murchison decided about routes and research topics and travelled long distances on foot taking stratigraphical sections and keeping track of correlations of structures, whereas it was Charlotte Murchison's task to do much of the time-consuming fossil-hunting, sketching of landscapes and geological structures and—speaking French fluently—to visit local experts, whose expertise might add to the success of the journey. Also, the different initial expectations and working styles of Charles Lyell and Roderick Murchison become evident.

ABSTRACT From 1840 to 1845, Roderick Murchison (1792–1871), an accomplished geologist who was instrumental in developing the Paleozoic portion of the geologic time scale, traveled in Europe, Scandinavia, and Russia, where he documented the occurrence and extent of the Silurian, Devonian, and Permian Systems. A key component of his fieldwork methodology was to examine fossils in both private collections and public museums to assess the types of fossils that occur in a region, in order to guide and expedite his mapping efforts. While working in Scandinavia, he examined fossil collections in Copenhagen, Oslo, Stockholm, Upsala, and Visby, and those collections clearly influenced his choice of travel routes and, ultimately, the geologic map (plate VI) in The Geology of Russia (Murchison et al., 1845). Furthermore, he was able to compare the Scandinavian fossils to British collections, thereby confirming the age of the strata he was mapping. The results of Murchison’s work appeared in numerous papers as well as two major books, The Geology of Russia (Murchison et al., 1845) and Siluria (Murchison, 1854), thereby advancing knowledge of Scandinavian stratigraphy. Not only were the fossil collections in the museums of his day essential to Murchison’s scientific research, but collections of documents in modern archives are invaluable in reconstructing his movements, observations, and discoveries more than 170 years ago, thereby demonstrating the utility of collections and museums to the construction of knowledge.

Abstract Archibald Geikie had some involvement in Victorian controversies over the age and interpretation of the Permian–Triassic Elgin reptiles. His early patronage by Roderick Murchison, and his biography of Murchison, gave him an unusual position, both in praising his older mentor and also in dealing with some of the mistakes he made. Murchison long held to the notion that the yellow sandstones at Elgin were all Devonian in age, even as more and more specimens of Mesozoic-style reptiles emerged. He eventually accepted that the palaeontological evidence trumped his beloved field observations, and it is likely Geikie never doubted the true age. Later, Geikie was honoured when a dicynodont from Elgin, Geikia , was named after him by Geological Survey staff palaeontologist E.T. Newton (1840–1930). The circumstances surrounding this choice of name remain uncertain.

Abstract Roderick Murchison traversed southern Sweden from Göteborg to Stockholm from 28 July to 8 August 1844. He was accompanied by Sven Lovén and they made extensive use of the geognostic map of Sweden published in 1834 by Wilhelm Hisinger. During that campaign, they visited numerous outcrops of Hisinger’s ‘Transition’ rocks and Murchison recognized them as belonging to the Lower Silurian, which he had described previously in Britain, Norway and Russia. In addition, he inspected fossil collections at the natural history museum in Stockholm and recognized that Gotland was composed of Upper Silurian rocks. Thus the 1844 campaign established for the first time the occurrence of Silurian rocks in Sweden and it consolidated the usefulness of Palaeozoic system terminology in this part of Scandinavia. Murchison’s efficient research methodology ensured his rapid progress in the field and the widespread dissemination of his findings.