Professor Collie has studied and written about Sir Roderick Murchison in several monographs. This study deals with Murchison and the wider and more general activity of scientific travels in the mid 19th C. This work introduces the reader to the practices of intellectual and cultural exchange in Continental Europe. These exchanges, despite the political pressures that often mitigated against the free flow of ideas, were increased as steam power and telegraphs made there way from West to East and intrepid savants, such as the eminent geologist Muchison. Each chapter is devoted to a specific journey as adventure, exploration, scientific enquiry, peer group contacts and personal, sometimes psychologically significant experience. Taken together they show the one time President of the Geological Society of London converting himself into the President of the Royal Geographical Society especially due to his travels in Eurasian Russia.
Chapter One: Early Travel in Scotland, Hebrides, the Far North
Chapter Two: Overland from Paris to St Petersburg via Riga
Chapter Three: Baden-Baden to Krakow via Berlin, Poznan[Posen] and Warsaw by foot, horseback,Landau and train.
Chapter Four: Stockholm to Mora via Uppsala, then coast route Gotland, southern Sweden and Lund
Chapter Five: From London to the Scottish Borders via Newcastle to introduce Count von Keyserling to British industry in 1842.
Chapter Six: From St.Petersburg to Ekaterinburg across the Urals, across the Don and back through Krakow searching for coal and minesites to support the TransSiberian and Russian State Railways.