•i i r> 



SOME NEW BOOKS 



"Let us now Praise Famous Men!" 



The Founders of Geolocy. By Sir Archibald Geikie. 8vo, pp. x+ "298. London: 



Macmillan & Co., 1897. Price, 6s. net. 



If, as Emerson has said, all history may be read in the lives of a few 

 great men, this may be regarded as specially true of the history of 

 science. The facts of science, no doubt, are accumulated by a multi- 

 tude of workers ; but ideas have their genesis in the brains of the 

 leaders, and the growth of the ideas may best be studied as it took 

 place originally in the minds of a few individuals. Hence Sir Archi- 

 bald Geikie. when eager to dispel the lamentable ignorance of most of 

 us concerning the historical development of geology, could have chosen 

 no better means than tins skilful and charming narration of the 

 endeavours of the early pioneers. 



The occasion of this work was the inauguration of the George 

 Huntington Williams Lectureship at Johns Hopkins University, and 

 one can imagine the delight with which American geologists listened 

 to the polished periods and lucid exposition of Sir Archibald. Some 

 of the perorations, indeed, are better adapted to the lecture-platform 

 than the study, and an occasional weakness in the usually correct and 

 forceful style suits the written less than the spoken word. Careful 

 revision, for instance, would have eliminated such a sentence as this : 

 " His father . . . died while the son was still very young, to whom 

 he left a small landed property in Berwickshire." We test the author 

 by his own high standard. 



The geologists referred to in this book are — Leibnitz and Buffon 

 (who, however, are not regarded as among the founders of geology, but 

 as the last of the cosmogonists), Guettard, Desmarest, Pallas, De 

 Saussure, Lehmann, Fuchsel, Werner, D'Aubuisson, Von Buch, 

 Hutton, Sir J. Hall, Giraucl-Soulavie, Cuvier, A. Brongniart, Omalius 

 d'Halloy, Bev. J. Michel], William Smith, Murchison, Sedgwick, 

 Logan, Agassiz, ISucol, Sorby, Lyell, and Darwin. Many others are 

 mentioned incidentally and, in relation to these, the pioneers. For 

 the expressed purpose of the book, this list is an excellent one. No 

 doubt, every one that has read much in the early literature of geology 

 will be ready with suggestions for its amendment. The fact is that 

 a vast number of these old writers were not so ignorant or so foolish 

 as we are too ready to suppose. Guettard is one whose claims have 

 been strangely overlooked, and we are delighted to see this admirable 

 appreciation of his many services to our science. But the list, it will 

 be noticed, is almost entirely confined to French, German, and British 

 geologists : Linnaeus and Wallerius are dismissed in a single line. 

 Linnaeus, however, did more than arrange certain minerals in one of 

 his kingdoms of nature : he studied the strata in which minerals and 

 organised fossils occurred, travelling through Sweden and making 



