Professor Geikie on the " Fitchstone " of Eskdale. 231 



he imbued with Werner's doctrines, his writings now bristled 

 with German words, and with English phrases built on a 

 thoroughly German model.* 



To Jameson's enthusiasm for science, and his great ser- 

 vices, not only to his own favourite department, mineralogy, 

 but to the cause of natural history, which he taught here for 

 half a century, the best testimony is to be found in the crowd 

 of distinguished naturalists who have been trained under him. 

 With sincere veneration for his memory, and a grateful recog- 

 nition of his eminent services, I must confess my own convic- 

 tion that his early influence on the progress of geological science 

 in this country was disastrous. He returned from Freiberg at 

 a time when Button's views were beginning to attract general 

 attention, and when Hall was in the full pursuit of his ex- 

 perimental researches. Had the university teaching of geo- 

 logy been in accord with the distinctively Scottish school, 

 what might not have been achieved by the labours of the 

 devoted band which the geniality and the energy of the new 

 professor now gathered around him ! But from the first he set 

 himself stubbornly against Plutonist views in any shape ; 

 could scarcely, indeed, restrain some contemptuous expression 

 when he had occasion to refer to them. It is true that the 

 opposition which he raised to these views kept alive an in- 

 terest in the subject, and indirectly advanced the science. 

 But the advantaoe derived from this source cannot be re- 

 garded as having afforded more than a very slight compensa- 

 tion for the injury done by the arrest, and almost extinction, 

 which Wernerianism under Jameson effected on the progress 

 of true geology here.-f* 



* Among the characters of minerals, for example, we find such definitions 

 as * 'not particularly difficultly frangible," "not particularly heavy, approach- 

 ing to light," "between hard and semi-hard," " saltly bitter," "metallic 

 glimmering," etc. — these phrases being followed by the German terms of 

 which they were translations. -7-(Treatise on the External, Chemical, and 

 Physical Characters of Minerals.) 



+ It is interesting to read the judgment pronounced on Jameson's standing 

 by one of his German contemporaries, K. C. von Leonhard, published in 

 1832: "Jameson wurde in Freiberg so fest und unerschiitterlich fiir die 

 anti-vulkanische Lehre eingenommen dass er sich von ihrer Unhaltbarkeit nicht 

 iiberzeugen konnte. Sie gait ihm als feste und unveranderliche Grundlage. 

 Von dieser Vorstellungs-Art hatte er allerdings um so mehr abkommen soUen 



