148 



his doing so. In the meantime he was by no means idle. The 

 interest aroused in his mind by the teaching he had received at 

 Edinburgh was constantly being increased by the practical study 

 of the geological features of the country around him. Geology 

 was then in its infancy, and consequently very little had been 

 written about that district ; but what had been written he seems to 

 have taken every opportunity of reading, as was his almost-constant 

 practice in regard to any other district he was studying in after life. 

 But he did not remain content with mastering the stock of inform- 

 ation at that time available; on the contrary, he appears, with 

 characteristic originality, to have set to work at once to bring his 

 knowledge to bear upon some of the many tlien-unsolved problems 

 that arrested his attention in the district around him. 



It is not easy nowadays to realise the full extent of the <]ifficulties 

 that, forty years ago, the pioneers of Geology had to contend with. 

 At the present day we have the most remote parts of the kingdom 

 rendered easily accessible by modern improvements in locomotion. 

 Good maps, admirable text-books, and first-class teaching, are 

 within the reach of nearly everyone : so that the modern student 

 may easily gain possession of more ready-made knowledge in a few 

 years than the fathers of our science would have found it possible 

 to acquire by constant study through a long life-time. 



In the year 1843 appeared Harkness's first communication to a 

 scientific society. This was read before the then-youthful Geo- 

 logical Society of Manchester, and was printed that same year in the 

 "Annals of Philosophy." This treated of the Climate of the Coal 

 Period, a subject that probably suggested itself in connection with 

 the nature of the rocks in the neighbourhood of his birthplace. In 

 this, his first essay, Harkness advanced views that, as the Editor of 

 the Geological Magazine has remarked, were advocated anew by Dr. 

 Sterry Hunt* after an interval of close upon a quarter of a century. 

 Another paper read before the same Society shortly afterwards, and 

 published in Vol. viii. of their Transactions, dealt with the Glacial 

 Theories advanced by Professor Agassiz. Both of these, although 

 more or less theoretical in character, have important bearings upon 

 * The Chemistry of the Primaeval Earth. Geol. Mag. iv. (1867) pp. 365-6. 



