James Geikie, the Man and the Geologist. Marion I. Newbigin
in many parts of Scotland are mantled by a thick covering of drift or peat. 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. It was a kind of mapping which could be done with considerable rapidity, and therefore involved frequent changes of quarters. Thus, as Prof. Geikie says in the account already mentioned, which he contributed to the Memoir attached to Prof. Young’s Essays and Addresses, “in a year or so we [Young and himself] had tramped carefully over the major portion of Fife and the Lothians.”
For all three novices this introductory period seems to have left delightful recollections. In the Memoir already quoted, Prof. 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.”
Though spoken but of one member of the trio, one may suspect that the statements had a wider application. In the case of James Geikie, but recently liberated from distasteful drudgery, having changed a life of close confinement for the open air which he loved, with reasonable prospects for the future opening out before him, it would have been strange if the “premature grave” of the letters of a few years’ earlier date had not disappeared into the background, and life become suddenly a great good, for youth and strength were both there, as yet untouched by time.
Though the three new members of the Survey were all engaged on the same kind of work, it must not be supposed that their work was done in common. Each had his particular task assigned to him, and though they often met, sometimes indeed lodged together, as was the case, for example, with Young and Geikie at Peebles in the early part of 1863, and Peach and Geikie in the spring of 1864, it was only their leisure hours which were spent in each other’s company. One may, without incurring the reproach of cynicism, suspect that this greatly increased the joys of companionship. If they had worked together, or even in couples, the inevitable rubs and difficulties of daily work, however congenial, might have checked exuberant intercourse. But meeting as they did when the day’s work was over, or only at intervals, with the tie of common interests, with many experiences to hear and to tell, the companionship became one of the great joys of life.
The brief account in the Memoir of Young is impregnated through and through with the recollection of this gladness of comradeship, and a few more phrases may be quoted to emphasise the point still further:—“Seated by a cosy peat fire, enveloped in clouds of tobacco smoke, confabulating, discussing, speculating, laughing over quaint scenes and droll experiences, life (if we had only known it!) had not much better to give.” We read also of the wine of life, and can feel that the writer of the account, who was then a man of sixty-five, could, despite the forty odd years which lay between, still feel its flavour upon his palate as he wrote. Some of the jokes and quips and tales of those old days have become Survey property, transmitted by word of mouth from generation to generation, forming part of that invisible strand which binds together the members of an organised body, so that while the individuals come and go, are separated by the seven seas, by life and by death, the spirit remains. For each individual in turn youth goes and strength decays, but something remains; and if in their dumb northern fashion the individuals in this case generally passed away without leaving enshrined either in art or in the written word a direct record of all they felt and did, it may yet not be amiss to indicate the enthusiasm, the devotion, and the joy that went to the making and colouring of those maps, and were embodied in those formal records.
But the immediate purpose here is only to suggest that those early days were for James Geikie a conscious escape from prison, a conscious means of self-realisation, and that it was probably the accident that his first official field-work was given to the drifts which determined the trend of his future scientific work. He states, it is true, in a short account of his career which appears in the Geological Magazine for June 1913, that his interest in the superficial formations, especially boulder-clay and the associated gravels and sands, dated from his school-days. One may well believe that, like many another born in a region where the till is abundant, he early succumbed to the fascination of that untidy but delightful occupation of digging stones out of the tenacious clay with nature’s weapons, washing them in the nearest stream, and then following with loving finger-tip those scratches and striations which bear so romantic a message. Like many others he doubtless pressed the cherished pebbles against his cheek, and verified practically, long years before he wrote it down in a printed book, the statement that they are smoothed and polished. Like many another also he probably early got into trouble for transferring in the course of his investigations more of the sticky tenacious deposit to his garments than was good for them, and was often under the sad necessity of discarding a proportion of the much-loved and much-fingered witnesses of an earlier age, because their abundance made the collection grow with unreasonable rapidity. But there is reason to believe that his early interest in the rocks was not confined to glacial phenomena, but was disseminated among a variety of geological subjects; and it seems probable that the concentration of attention, throughout long years, on the Ice Age was largely due to the effect of his first work on the Survey, and to the flood of pleasurable emotion with which that work was accompanied.
But it must not be supposed that his work, even in the early years, was confined to the mapping of the superficial deposits. So early as 1863 he was already doing solid geology, and thereafter went on with the mapping of solid and superficial deposits at the same time. But while he did much good work quite apart from glacial questions, and was interested in many kinds of geological problems, it was the history of the Ice Cap of Europe which especially appealed to him. His holidays—brief in early days—were devoted to the study of glacial phenomena outside his own region. His leisure hours, spent by some of his colleagues in fishing or other forms of sport, or in visiting, were largely devoted to keeping himself abreast of the literature of the subject; and this was also one of the motives which led him to study languages so assiduously, with the result that he was able to make first-hand acquaintance with the papers of all the continental geologists who wrote on his own subject.
If, however, throughout his long life his geological first love commanded his unswerving devotion, it was not because the charms of other paths did not appeal to him. Some of the letters speak of an ardent desire, apparently never gratified, to deal thoroughly with Carboniferous problems, to which his attention was drawn during his prolonged and toilsome mapping of the Lanarkshire coalfield; and in an interesting letter to the writer, which dates from the early part of 1909, he speaks of other questions which had also always attracted him. Some passages from this letter may be quoted:—
Curious how the revision of old charts of the Mediterranean have re-awakened my interest in the structure of that basin or series of basins! At one time I had a notion of writing a detailed memoir on the subject, but I found it would be necessary to visit many parts of the Mediterranean coast-lands which I had not seen and to revisit other parts which I had looked at. I still think there is much interesting work awaiting investigation there—the Italian geologists seem to me to have missed the meaning of some of the evidence which their own maps supply! If I were only twenty years younger I believe I should start off at once—that bothering glacial work quite drew me away from the Mediterranean problems. Now there is no hope for me, unless on the other side of time I may be permitted to resume investigations. In that case I shall be independent of railways, steamboats, and even motor cars, while I presume no hotel accommodation will be required. Perhaps by means of telepathy I may be able to communicate results to you as Editor of the Magazine. Unfortunately, however, it would seem from the records of the Psychical Society, that when one becomes disembodied and is interviewed by his bereaved and sorrowing friends he is invariably found to have become little better than a drivelling idiot, having lost any sense he may at one time have possessed. Instead of enlightening you on the origin of the Mediterranean, I may be anxious rather to get you to inform