NATURE 



461 



THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 14, 1918. 



lAFE AND WORK OF JAMES GEIKIE. 

 James Geikie : The Man and the Geologist. By 

 Dr. M. I. Newbig^in and Dr. J. S. Flett. Pp. 

 xi-i-227. (Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd; Lon- 

 don : Gurney and Jackson, 191 7.) Price 75. 6d. 

 net. 



THE life of James Geikie deserved to be 

 written, for he was not only a good geo- 

 logist with marked literary gifts, but also had 

 an innate love of travel. Nature, and the humor- 

 ous, with the art of making friends. The task 

 has been well done, the biographical part by 

 Dr. Marion Newbigin, the strictly geological by 

 Dr. J. S. Flett. The book avoids the error, so 

 common in biographies, of needless prolixity ; it 

 contains well-selected specimens of Geikie 's letters 

 and writings, grave and gay, with three good 

 likenesses and an amusing sketch, and abstains 

 from commonplace padding. 



Born at Edinburgh in 1839, James Geikie 

 (Murdoch, his second Christian name, was early 

 discarded), after its High School and a short period 

 of uncongenial employment, obtained, in 1861, an 

 appointment to the Geological Survey. On that 

 he worked for twenty years, rising to be District 

 Surveyor, then gave it up reluctantly to become 

 Murchisonian Professor in the University of 

 Edinburgh. One of his earliest duties in the 

 former capacity was to map the drifts of Fifeshire 

 and the Lothians, which attracted him to the 

 problem of their origin and moulded his future 

 studies. Then he went on to the solid geology of 

 Ayrshire, the Lanark coalfield, the Cheviots, and 

 other districts of southern Scotland. As professor 

 he discharged the duties of his chair zealously 

 until the early summer of 1914, and on March i 

 of the following year died suddenly from heart 

 failure. As a worker, whether in the field, the 

 class-room, qr the study, he was indefatigable; 

 in fact, he evidently overtasked even his vigorous 

 constitution, often suffering in his later years from 

 more than one form .of nervous exhaustion, and 

 probably somewhat shortened his span of life. 

 Notwithstanding his numerous ties, professional 

 and social— for he was a devoted husband, father, 

 and friend — he was able to see more than a little 

 of other lands, visiting Iceland, the Faroes, and 

 Norway, France, Germany, Switzerland, and 

 Italy, with Egypt, the Canaries, Canada, and the 

 United States, always keenly observant and 

 gathering notes for use In the lecture-room and 

 his numerous contributions to scientific literature. 



The most outstanding of his works are " The 

 Great Ice Age" and "Prehistoric Europe." Of 

 them and of the author's position in the Glacial 

 controversy Dr. Flett writes clearly, concisely, 

 and apparently as If he thought his client to have 

 gained his cause. Be this as It may — and the 

 present writer unfortunately differs in some im- 

 portant respects from the late professor's Inter- 

 pretation of Nature's hieroglyphs of the Ice age, 

 NO. 2520, VOL. 100] 



scarcely less than from his inferences about meta- 

 morphism In Ayrshire — all students will gladly 

 acknowledge the value of the above-named books. 

 The third edition of "The Great Ice Age" (pub- 

 lished in 1894) is a veritable mine of information, 

 collected from many lands and diverse sources, 

 about its deposits and their significance ; and the 

 other volume — "Prehistoric Europe" — discusses 

 in addition the advent of man, which, according 

 to its author, was anterior to the Glacial Epoch. 



But even antagonists who think that he was 

 a little too prone to put his trust in Continental 

 prophets of the Ice age (when they were favour- 

 able to his views), and to ignore rather than to 

 refute the criticisms of opponents, will assign a 

 high place to these volumes as works of reference. 

 The same may be said of his geological articles 

 — and they would themselves make a volume — in 

 "Chambers's Encyclopaedia," where he successfully 

 puts off the advocate to become the judge. In all 

 that he published his style was attractive ; he 

 evidently wrote with facility, sought to make him- 

 self Intelligible, and never shirked his work. In 

 brief, he was a many-sided, very able, and most 

 genial man, who had the power of winning the 

 regard of his students, and whose loss was re- 

 gretted by everyone who had been his workfellow, 

 his friend, or even his antagonist. 



T. G. BONNEY. 



THE COMPLETE DAIRY FARMER. 

 Dairy Cattle Feeding and Management. By Dr. 

 C. W. Larson and Prof. F. S. Putney. Pp. 

 XX + 471. (New York: John Wiley and vSons, 

 Inc.; London: Chapman and Hall, Ltd., 1917.) 

 Price ii.f. 6d. net. 



IP HE ancient art of agriculture has always been 

 J- invested with a halo of romance, through 

 which only In times of the severest national stress 

 has Its essentially prosaic character as the great 

 Kidustry of food production been clearly discern- 

 ible t6 the popular eye. In the lay Imagination the 

 idea commonly persists that the art still retains 

 essentially its primitive form, amounting to little 

 more than a crudely systematic collection of the 

 gifts which from year to year a benevolent, though 

 not always generous. Providence is pleased to 

 bestow upon mankind. 



It Is lamentable, but Inevitable, that in all 

 aspects of human activity the advance of know- 

 ledge should tend to overlay the rosy tints of 

 romance with the more sombre hues of reality. 

 The philosopher-ploughman of yesterday gives 

 way to the motor engineer of to-morrow; the milk- 

 ing machine dispels the last vestige of romance 

 fiom the art of the dairymaid. 



In the days before the Industrial Revolution the 

 production of milk was largely incidental to the 

 production of crops and meat, and the needs of the 

 community could be satisfied without recourse to 

 even such simnle intensive methods of milk pro- 

 drction as could then have been employed. With 

 the steady divorce of the food consumer from food 

 production, and the Increasing dependence of clvi- 



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