Biographical sketch of Hugh Falconer, A.M., M.D / by Charles Murchison.

  • Charles Murchison
Date:
[1868]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Biographical sketch of Hugh Falconer, A.M., M.D / by Charles Murchison. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    blended. Being a remote provincial station, with at that time only half-a-dozen European families, the white man had to draw on local means in all emergencies where the appliances of civilized life were required; but the intelligence, docility, and exquisite manual dexterity of the natives, backed by their faith in the guiding head of the European, furnished an inexhaustible fund of resource. To construct, for example, a barometer for mountain explorations, broken tumblers were melted and blown into a tube ; mercury was distilled from cinnabar purchased in the bazaar; a reservoir was turned out of box-wood felled in the mountains ; and finally a brass scale was cast, shaped, and even graduated, by a native blacksmith, under the superintending eye of the amateur. Or again, he might be seen superintending the expression of some indi- genous oil as a substitute for salad oil, when the European supply had been exhausted. Such discipline was of infinite value in training the young officer to habits of self-reliance and to kindly relations with those among whom his lot was cast, and no doubt contributed to that great fund of uni- versal information for which Falconer was afterwards so remarkable. In 1831 Dr. Falconer commenced his field explorations, by investigating the geological formation of the Sewalik Hills. Captain Herbert, in his mineralogical survey of the H. W. Himalayahs, had referred the Sub-Himalayahs to the age of the ^ Hew Red Sandstone; ’ but Dr. Falconer, on his first visit, from finding beds of incoherent gravel covering the northern slope of the range, from the occurrence of seams of lignite and dicotyledonous woods discovered by Lieutenant Cautley in 1827, and from the mineral characters of the different strata, inferred that they were of a tertiary age, and analogous to the Molasse of Switzerland.^ Thirty years of subsequent research by other geologists have not altered that determination, although our exact knowledge of the formation has been greatly extended. Early in 1834 Dr. Falconer gave a brief account of the Sewalik Hills, describing their physical features and geological structure, with the first published section showing their relation to the Hinia- layahs.^ The name ^ Sewalik ’ had been vaguely applied Edinburgh University, February 8, 1836. - lb., vol. iii. p. 182. * Journal Asiatic Society of Bengal, March 1832, vol. i. p. 96; and letter to the late Professor Jameson of
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