James Geikie

“ It would indeed be difficult to imagine two men of more different type; for James Geikie, the utilitarian’s long years of waiting and longing would have been as intolerable as the brief fever of the last days.
The entries in the diary are as usual short in the extreme, but under 12th August, which it is carefully noted was a wet day, the diarist was at a picnic in the Cheviots. He adds the word “lost”? to the laconic entry. Later entries record calls made to Crailing Hall with brief comments. ”

“ As time went on, some of the younger geologists [Pg 163] who had joined the Survey after James Geikie became enthusiastic workers at glacial science, and came to earn a reputation only second to Geikie himself in this department of geology. Of these, we may specially mention Dr John Horne and Dr Benjamin N. Peach, both of whom became eminent authorities on the glacial geology of Scotland. In early years they were James Geikie’s most intimate friends; their observations were always at his service, and their criticism and advice he greatly valued. ”

“ James Geikie was much attached to Croll, and while he never professed to be versed in the mathematical branches of science, he was prepared to accept the accuracy of Croll’s theories. The other causes of glaciation which had been advanced by various geologists, such as Lyell’s hypothesis of elevation and depression of the land, he believed to be quite inadequate, and in the first edition of The Great Ice Age he states Croll’s hypothesis with evident approval, or at any rate regards it as the only explanation at that time offered which could be held to be at all in accordance with the facts. ”

“ Although James Geikie was always a great reader, it is not likely that he had more than an elementary knowledge of geology when he joined [Pg 152] the Survey in 1861. Trained geologists, however, in those days were much less common than they are now, and the Survey was prepared to enrol men who had a good general education and showed special inclination and aptitude for this line of work. Careful personal selection must have been exercised, for many of those who then joined its ranks rose subsequently to high eminence in science. ”

“ The old Scottish school of geology which had numbered so many famous men among its members found in James Geikie one of its most distinguished representatives. In science, as in all things, he was pre-eminently a Scotsman. Ramsay and Croll, two of the most philosophic geologists of their time, were the men to whom he owed the inspiration which originally directed him, and he was a true disciple of Playfair, whose memory he reverenced. ”

“ In considering this branch of James Geikie’s scientific work we may trace a considerable amount of influence exerted on his thought by James Croll, one of the most remarkable geologists that Scotland has produced. Croll was a man who started life in a very humble position; he educated himself, and by sheer power of intellect and dogged perseverance he attained eminence in scientific work. He was at once a metaphysician and a physicist, but it is only with the latter aspect of his teaching that we are here concerned. ”

“ With his appointment in 1882 to the Murchison Chair of Geology and Mineralogy in Edinburgh University to succeed his brother Sir Archibald Geikie, a new epoch began in James Geikie’s career. For some years he had been District Surveyor on the Scottish Survey, a post of considerable responsibility, and requiring the exercise of tact and firmness, but one which presented most valuable opportunities to a keen geologist. The Scottish Survey at that time had an exceptionally strong personnel, and in pure field geology was setting a standard of excellence which has rarely been surpassed. ”

“ By this time the question of changes in the Survey was becoming acute, and James Geikie was beginning to debate with himself as to whether he ought to try for the Chair in Geology at Edinburgh for his children’s sake. The indecision he found very unsettling. “I can settle to nothing—reading and writing are alike out of the question.” More than a month later he writes:—“I am pulled two ways—my own desire and wish is to remain in the Survey.” “My repugnance to that Chair,” he says a few days later, “increases as the days go past.” ”

“ Ramsay were the guests of honour, the military band played Scotch music in compliment to their nationality, and among the airs James Geikie recognised a selection arranged by his father for a Scotch regiment many years before.
Among the excursions was included one to the African coast, where the two made a short stay in Tangier: the diary, with characteristic orderliness, records the purchases made here for the people at home. But in addition to making these, the two found time to study the geology of the coast between Ceuta and Cape Spartel. ”

“ It may be added, however, that letters from Ramsay, received at the close of the year, and dealing with the problems raised by James Geikie’s paper on “Changes of Climate during the Glacial Epoch,” a paper of which Ramsay thought highly, show clearly what the years of preparation had done for him, despite their almost ceaseless toil.
It must not be supposed, however, that life was made up of nothing but toil, alleviated by occasional [Pg 51] holidays. For many years a considerable amount of the Survey work was done in London, and parts of many winters were spent there. ”

“ In all his writings he places in the foreground the observations which he and his fellow-workers in Scotland had made in the field, and the inferences drawn from them; and it was in no small measure to James Geikie that the high position which the work of Scottish geologists holds in the estimation of scientific men is to be ascribed. ”

“ Among the Scottish geological staff James Geikie’s position as a field-geologist and as a glacialist was fully recognised, and he had the unquestioning support of his colleagues. His life was full of variety and interest. No doubt, like other men, he had made mistakes and had been severely handled by some of his critics. Some of his early work on the Silurian volcanic rocks of Ayrshire, for example, had suffered greatly from his insufficient knowledge of the chemical and mineralogical foundations on which geology rests. ”

“ The period of his working life, from 1861 onwards till his death, witnessed an extraordinary change in the views of geologists upon problems connected with ice, saw an enormous output of material in the way of papers and articles and books, and the world has to be grateful to James Geikie for both directly and indirectly opening its eyes to much that was previously hidden. ”

“ The efficiency of land ice to explain most of the puzzling features of the drifts was the main thesis which the book was written to uphold. But there were many subordinate problems which came up for consideration. One of these is the amount of erosion which the ice-sheets and glaciers had produced. In this James Geikie followed very closely in the footsteps of Ramsay; on the origin of rock-basins, fjords, and sea lochs there is in fact practically complete agreement in their views. ”

“ The determination of all fossils requiring critical skill was in the hands of the Survey palæontologists. Each geologist surveyed from a hundred to a hundred and fifty miles in a field season, which, allowing for holidays, amounted to seven or eight months, and to do this required regular hard work, much strenuous walking, and the power of concentrating on the general features, and not allowing one’s attention to be absorbed by inconsequent details.
James Geikie seems to have had no difficulty whatever in picking up the essentials of field geology. ”

“ It was decided, chiefly on economic grounds, especially in connection with agriculture, that not only should these superficial deposits be in future mapped along with the solid geology, but that the areas already surveyed should be re-mapped, with the object of adding the omitted beds. As already stated, Dr Young and James Geikie joined the Survey in 1861, and Mr Peach at the beginning of 1862. All three soon after their appointment were entrusted with this work in Fife and the Lothians, which had already had their solid geology mapped. ”

“ Several of his colleagues came to be recognised in the course of a few years as scientific men of the highest distinction, and among them there was a spirit of camaraderie and of friendly emulation in research which made their daily tasks a constant source of novelty and of unflagging interest. To many of his colleagues, such as Peach, Horne, Jack, Croll, Skae, and Irvine, James Geikie had been indebted for important information and for the most searching criticism, combined with [Pg 181] unselfish appreciation of the value of his work. ”

“ His views are embodied in his chief work, The Great Ice Age and its Relation to the Antiquity of Man (1874; 3rd ed., 1894) . He was elected F.R.S. in 1875. James Geikie became the leader of the school that upholds the all-important action of land-ice, as against those geologists who assign chief importance to the work of pack-ice and icebergs. ”

“ Verily I do believe a good wife and loving mother is the only treasure of treasures that is worth striving for in this world!... How much you and I have to be thankful for!
These are a few extracts written to his friend Mr Horne at the moment when the history of the incident was just becoming plain, and at a time also when Mr Horne’s first child had just been born; they throw perhaps more light upon it and upon the character of James Geikie than any ordered narrative could do. ”

“ What are you about, and how do you like the work? Is the Drift blinding your eyes and do you yet see as through a glass darkly? I suppose your Boulder-clay in the high grounds will give you no bother. If you get any gravel will you be so good as let me know whether it occurs in valleys whose watershed is over or under 1000 feet?
Mr Horne was then working in the Nith valley, being stationed at Thornhill. James Geikie by this time had moved from Ayrshire into Renfrewshire and Lanarkshire. ”

“ None of the towns or hamlets at the foot of the Cheviots was near enough to form a good centre of work, and the region being given up to large sheep farms, habitations of any kind among the hills are few and scattered. Among James Geikie’s acquaintances in the Jedburgh district was Mr Simson, Oxnam Row, to whose farm on the lower slopes were added the hill grazings higher up the Kale Water. ”

“ Geikie says:—“Those were halcyon days, and I am sure Young enjoyed them to the full. Often in subsequent years, after he had finally settled in Glasgow, he would recur to them, recalling with delight old scenes and old faces which he and I had known together. The life of a field-geologist is, from many points of view, an enviable one, and could youth and strength endure, one might well be content to follow it to the end.” ”

“ What was really remarkable in this conversation, I should say, was the readiness and whole-heartedness with which he threw himself into it, the stimulus given by his never-failing interest and occasional enthusiasm, the fine good-nature with which he unquestioningly put himself on equal terms with one who was many years younger than himself, and whose opinions, however confidently expressed, must often have been crude and immature. Neither then, nor at any subsequent time, was there anything whatever that was pedantic or academic about Geikie. ”

“ That man may have existed previously no one need deny, but no one can at present positively affirm on any ground of actual fact. It may be necessary here to explain the contentions often made that in Britain and Western Europe man belongs to an interglacial period. When with Dr. James Geikie, the great Scottish glacialist, we hold that there were several interglacial periods, the Glacial age may be extended by including the warm period of the Palanthropic, and the cold at its termination, as one of the interglacial and Glacial periods. ”

“ Croll saw at a very early stage that to land ice must be ascribed practically the whole of the glacial phenomena of Scotland. He inferred from a number of facts that the North Sea [Pg 167] had been filled with Scandinavian ice during the maximum stages of glaciation, and he suggested lines of research to James Geikie, John Horne, and Benjamin Peach that led to important contributions to the literature of Scottish glacial geology. ”

“ When Geikie began to map both the solid and drift geology of a hitherto unsurveyed district, he was sent to Ayrshire and West Lanarkshire, where he undertook the survey of a large area stretching from Eaglesham southwards to New Cumnock. His brother was mapping, or had already mapped, a broad strip extending inwards from the coast-line and reaching from near Largs in the north to Dailly in the south, while to the east of him was Peach engaged in the survey of Southern Lanarkshire. ”

“ R. L. Jack, who also mapped the rest of the plateau to the Clyde, and a portion of the high ground of Renfrewshire and Ayrshire; the rest of the area, south to Ardrossan, was surveyed by myself. The tract from Stewarton to Strathavon was surveyed by Mr. James Geikie, the Cumbraes and Bute by Mr. W. Gunn, and southern Cantyre by Mr. R. G. Symes. The Campsie Hills have been partly described by Mr. John Young in the first volume of the Transactions of the Glasgow Geological Society. The occurrence of plants in the tuffs of the east coast of Arran was discovered by Mr. E. Wunsch. ”