James Geikie, the Man and the Geologist. Marion I. Newbigin
tradesman who is dunning her for a sum of 2s. 6d. which I had already paid.
The letter shows that he realised what his devotion had cost him; but when we reflect not only upon what he himself accomplished but on the extraordinary stimulus which his conclusions, some of which were at first fiercely criticised, gave to the investigation of glacial problems by others, here, on the Continent, and in America, we can hardly believe that he regretted seriously his own whole-heartedness. 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.
His glacial work and its significance are alike discussed by Dr. Flett in the second part of this volume, and need not be treated here, but a word or two is necessary to explain the intense interest which glacial problems aroused among all the Survey men during the period we are considering, and in James Geikie in particular. A quotation from a letter of thanks written by Charles Darwin, after receiving a copy of the second edition of The Great Ice Age, will throw some light upon this. The letter is dated 26th October 1876, and Darwin says:—“The subject [i.e., the Ice Age] is one which fascinates me, chiefly owing to a little incident which I will mention as showing the grand progress of geology. When I was a boy an acute old gentleman who had attended to geology and natural history showed me a boulder in Shropshire, and assured me solemnly that the world would pass away before any one could explain how this great stone came from Cumberland or Scotland. This made a deep impression on me, and you may believe how delighted I was some forty years ago when floating ice action was first broached, to be followed some years afterwards by glacier action.”
We see from this letter that the thought of the mystery of the great boulder haunted Darwin for years, but the young geologists of the Survey were confronted not with one boulder, but, day after day, week after week, with an accumulation of only half-explained mysteries. When they started work the view that a large part of the British Islands had been covered by land ice, and that the boulder-clay was the record of its passage, had, after a period of neglect, again come into prominence; but it was very far from being universally accepted (see the historical discussion in Part II.). Then, and for many years to come, the view that the boulder-clay, erratics, and so forth had been dropped by floating icebergs still commanded many followers. The suggestion that there was not one Glacial Period only but a series of advances and retreats, with well-marked interglacial periods between, had yet to be born. Thus the subject was a burning one at the moment, and in their meetings, whether in the field or, when the field-work was done for the season, at headquarters, the members of the Survey had much to discuss and to tell, many fragments of evidence to piece together. They seem all to have been greatly interested in the subject; but that James Geikie made it so peculiarly his own was partly due to the constructive imagination which enabled him to visualise, in a series of brilliant flashes, not the country as he saw it, but the former conditions to which it bore testimony. This constructive imagination was aided also, as has been indicated, by constant toil and by ceaseless comparison, by means both of personal visits and through the writings of others, of local conditions with those of other regions and of other lands.
It is also not without significance to note that his own first work, and indeed generally most of his Survey work throughout his period of service, lay in what is described as the peripheral area of the old glaciation. In any area which is or has been glaciated it is possible to distinguish between a central area where erosion is at a maximum, and where the evidence of the existence of former ice-sheets is almost necessarily masked by the work of later glaciers, and a peripheral area where ice work takes the form of deposition. In this latter area it is often possible to unravel the complex evidence to an extent sufficient to determine the question whether more than one Glacial Period existed or not. It was to this problem that James Geikie devoted much of his attention, and this fact must be regarded as largely explained by the other that his geological field-work was done in Lowland rather than in Highland areas.
In so far as the details of the Survey work go, we may note that theoretically the summer was devoted to field-work and the winter to indoor work, at first either in London or at the Industrial Museum in Edinburgh, and later, after the establishment of the Survey Office in Edinburgh, at that office. But this general scheme was modified considerably by circumstances. Summer and winter, notably, had a somewhat different sense from that which the calendar gives. For example, an entry in his official diary for 1863 states, under date 17th February:—“Pack-up in Office for country;” while in the same year field-work seemed to continue, with short interruptions, till December. In the following year, 1864, a start was made even earlier, on 1st February. That somebody was taking too optimistic a view of Scotch weather is, however, obvious from the entries in the diary, where “snow,” “snow,” “snow and rain,” “wet day,” “snow, 8 or 9 inches” follow each other with a steady persistency, which justifies the brief entry on 14th March: “Begin to grow desperate—lock up my razors.” At this time Mr. Peach and James Geikie were endeavouring to map the Ochils from Kinross as a centre, and Dr. Peach informs the writer that the two made strenuous but mostly ineffectual efforts to get on with their outdoor work at a time when rocks and superficial deposits alike were concealed in a thick mantle of snow. Apparently, however, there were some alleviations, for one of the tantalisingly short entries in the diary mentions a “Pisgah view of Ochils,” obtained apparently from Rumbling Bridge; while Dr. Peach states that out of working hours the two toiled hard at their German.
The mode of study took a direction which had some influence on James Geikie’s future, and is of interest on this account. The first impetus to the study of the language came apparently from Dr. Young, who was very friendly with Dr. Schmitz, the Rector of the High School, whose daughter he married at a later date. Young had apparently a good knowledge of the language, and he, early in their association, urged upon Mr. Peach the necessity of acquiring at least a reading acquaintance with it, and recommended the learning of German poetry as a capital means of obtaining a vocabulary. By the spring of 1864 Mr. Peach had already a considerable repertory, and his recitals roused in James Geikie his old passion for verse-making. The songs were first put into rough English, with many jokes about their sentimentality, and then James Geikie turned the rough translations into English verse. This was the beginning of a pastime which he carried on during a large part of his life. A selection of the verses was published in 1887 as Songs and Lyrics by Heinrich Heine and other German Poets. In the preface the author says that all the renderings there given were done “for his own amusement in those ‘brave days of youth,’ when difficulties and impossibilities are hardly recognised.” Many of the verses were published practically unaltered after more than twenty years’ interval, for most of them were made in very early days. They occur in letters, in note-books, diaries, and in various other places among his papers of the later sixties, and were evidently a true labour of love.
As frequent mention has been made of the diaries, it may be well to state that these for the most part contain little or nothing save the barest records of mapping done, hours of work, memoranda as to expenses, and so forth. Those of the first year or two, however, not unnaturally, since the work was entirely new, are a little fuller. That for 1862, if it ever existed, does not seem to have been preserved; but 1863 contains one or two interesting entries, which emphasise still further the point already made as to the enthusiasm, plans, and ambitions with which the Survey was entered. On its first leaf the following lines are written:—“Was not so old last year as I am this—fact for the curious biographer who is no doubt destined to reap immortality by the interesting use he will make of the copious entries in this diary.” But as for many weeks afterwards the “curious biographer” finds no written word beyond the statement that drawing pens were bought at an outlay of 1s. 6d., it is to be feared that no superstructure in regard to an expectation of future fame can be built upon the entry. The corresponding page on next year’s diary is more prosaic, for it bears only a series of “Memoranda” which include an injunction to get a wife when income allows, and to have only three children, two boys and one girl. Rather oddly there is a letter extant which announces the birth