Having displayed remarkable powers as a boy, demonstrating skills with fireworks at Lostwithiel, he was sent after finishing grammar school to study medicine at the University of Edinburgh.

[2][3][4] The evidence they afforded of his capacity, and the fact that he already had received a scientific appointment, probably led to his being selected in the same year to make some geological and mineralogical investigations in Scotland.

He was also consulted on the suitability of the chief Scottish mountains for a repetition of the pendulum experiments previously conducted by Nevil Maskelyne and John Playfair at Schiehallion, and on the deviations of the plumb-line along the meridian of the Trigonometrical Survey.

One of his most important labours was the examination of the whole range of islands along the west of Scotland, at that time not easily visited, and presenting many obstacles to a scientific explorer.

From that date up to the time of his death he returned each summer to Scotland and traversed every district of the kingdom, inserting the geological features upon Arrowsmith's map, the only one then available for his purpose.

1831);[1] Proofs and Illustrations of the Attributes of God, from the Facts and Laws of the Physical Universe: Being the Foundation of Natural and Revealed Religion (3 vols.

[7] He married Louisa Margaretta White of Addiscombe and during his honeymoon in Cornwall he fell from a carriage and sustained multiple fractures to his right leg.