SKETCH OF SIR ARCHIBALD GEIKIE. 263 



nomena of the United States, and of the value of the study of 

 them for the contributions it affords to our general knowledge 

 of the subject and the explanations it furnishes of phenomena 

 in other countries. 



Writing on the subject in 1875, he said the United States had 

 certainly done noble work in the exploration and mapping of its 

 vast empire. Having spoken commendatorily of the style in which 

 the reports were prepared and distributed, he added, " But what- 

 ever be their external guise, these narratives are pervaded by an 

 earnestness and enthusiasm, a consciousness of the magnitude of 

 the scale on which the phenomena have been produced, and yet a 

 sustained style of quiet description, which can not but strike the 

 reader." In reviewing Hay den's Report at the end of 1883, he 

 ascribes a singular fascination to American geology. " Its fea- 

 tures are as a whole so massive and colossal, their infinite detail so 

 subordinated to breadth of effect, their presentation of the great 

 elements of geological structure so grand, yet so simple and so 

 clearly legible, that they may serve as types for elucidating the 

 rest of the world. The progress of sound geology would assuredly 

 have been more rapid had the science made its first start in the 

 far West of America, rather than among the crumpled and broken 

 rocks of western Europe. Truths that have been gained on this 

 side of the Atlantic by the laborious gathering together of a 

 broken chain of evidence would have proclaimed themselves from 

 thousands of plateaux, canons, and mountain ranges, in language 

 too plain to be mistaken. No European geologist can visit these 

 Western regions without realizing more or less distinctly what an 

 amount of time has been wasted over questions about which there 

 should never have been any discussion at all. This impression is 

 renewed by every new geological memoir which brings to us 

 fresh revelations of the scenery and structure of the Western 

 Territories." 



On the occasion of his appointment as Director-General of the 

 Geological Survey of Great Britain and Ireland, Prof. Geikie was 

 presented in March, 1882, by past and present students of the 

 geology class in the University of Edinburgh with an illumi- 

 nated address, recording their sense of loss on his leaving the uni- 

 versity ; referring to the distinguished services he had rendered 

 the science; recognizing the signal success with which he had 

 maintained the reputation of the Scottish school of geology, and 

 of Edinburgh ; and expressing the sympathy and affection with 

 which they regarded him. Prof. Geikie responded in similar 

 spirit, and said that he believed he was the first in Scotland, if not 

 in Britain, to organize a practical class for the study of miner- 

 alogy and the microscopic investigation of rocks. He had tried 

 always to make the cultivation of field geology a prominent part 



