NATURE 



[Dec. 7, 1 87 1 



Of course this is the final resort after it is clear that 

 Scotsmen decline to supply the money needed ; but in 

 Glasgow at least it is not to be believed that the examples 

 of Manchester, Birmingham, and Durham will be without 

 effect. All that has been said is equally true of Ireland ; 

 but the practical treatment of the difficulty involves other 

 considerations upon which we cannot at present enter. 



yC/ICES'S LETTERS 



Letters and Extracts from the Addresses and Occasional 



Writings of J. Bcete Jukes, JIf.A., KR.S., EG.S. 



Edited, with connecting Memorial Notes, by his Sister, 



with a Portrait. (London : Chapman and Hall, iS/l.) 



T T OW few among us — when his glass is run — would care 



J- -1 to ha\-c the story of his life from year to year, even 



from his boyish days, writ down and published to the 



world — indeed, how very few would be found worthy of 



more record than "born, lived, died." Now and again, 



however, one meets with a man whose career in life is not 



only lifted above the monotonous hum-drum existence of 



ordinary mortals, but who, both by his life and writings, 



attracts our admiration and regard. 



Such a man was Joseph Beete Jukes, a sketch of whose 

 life and writings, together with some two hundred letters, 

 edited by his sister, Mrs. A. H. Browne, form the substance 

 of this \-olume. 



Blest not only with a goodly person and stature but 

 with a noble and generous nature, which won to his side 

 both the ignorant and the educated, Mr. Jukes was also a 

 man of high mental endowments, and both as a speaker 

 and a writer had the knack to command attention. But 

 in his leisure hours no one entered more keenly than he 

 into all the enjoyments of the countiy, being fond of hard 

 riding, and a keen sportsman and good shot. Nor was he 

 less fond of a good joke, as his letters often testify. 



Educated at Cambridge during Sedgwick's palmy days,* 

 no wonder that he caught some of the fire from " Old 

 Adam," as his students lovingly nicknamed him, and 

 instead of entering the Church, as his mother fondly hoped, 

 inaugurated a career for himself by walking through Der- 

 byshire, Staffordshire, Cheshire, Shropshire, Yorkshire, 

 and many other parts of England, geologising and lec- 

 turing wherever he could get a class to attend. And very 

 successful Jukes seems to have been. Writing from Not- 

 tingham in June 183S, he says, " I have had a very good 

 class here, never less than two or three hundred, and 

 frequently four or five hundred ' (p. 26). 



Having about 1S38 made himself acquainted with prac- 

 tical surveying, he was in 1839 offered the appointment of 

 Geological Surveyor of Newfoundland, a post he gladly 

 accepted, and which occupied his time until the close of 

 1S40. Into all the hardships of this work he entered with 

 his accustomed good-will and spirits. Mr. Jukes contrasts 

 his own easier lot with that of the hardy natur.alist Prof. 

 Stuwit;:, who "set off at the beginning of December in a 

 boat with a little cuddy, to which ^he says) my cabin is a 

 palace, to see the winter fishing in Fortune Bay. with the 

 chance of being frozen up on his return, and having to get 

 ashore and come through the woods and snow," and he 

 adds, '■ don't talk of my hardships and pri\ations and 

 courage" (p. 91}. But the Newfoundland sur\-ey ended 



* He matricul.ited at St. John's in i8^, being then nineteen yc.irs of .ige. 



in October 1840,* and early in 1842 Mr. Jukes had the 

 satisfaction to find himself appointed to the office of 

 Naturalist to the Expedition for surveying Torres Straits, 

 New Guinea, &c., on board H.M. ship Ffy, commanded 

 by Captain E. P. Blackwood, R.N. This task, so conge- 

 nial to him who loved no occupation so well as one re- 

 quiring constant out-door exercise in the saddle, on foot, 

 or on the water, occupied him until June, 1846, and during 

 his four years' absence his letters and journals furnish 

 abundant materials of interest to the reader ; much of 

 which, however, will necessarily also be found in Mr. 

 Jukes's book entitled " Narrative of the Surveying \'oyage 

 of H.M.S. Ffy (2 vols.), published in 1847. 



His description of scenery in the interior of Java is 

 very interesting : — " Rich plains covered with all kinds of 

 tropical productions, watered in every direction by clear 

 rocky brooks, surrounded by mountains, either in single 

 cones or serrated ranges, from 5,000 to 11,000 feet in 

 height ; abundance of game whenever we choose to stop 

 and shoot, jungle-fowl, peacocks, deer, wild pigs, tigers. 

 We crossed one great range of mountains by a path that 

 led us through the extinct crater of a volcano, five miles 

 across and 7,000 feet above the sea, and in the centre of 

 which was a small cone and crater still in action, though 

 when we looked down into it it was only blowing out 

 steam, with a roai- as of a thousand blast-furnaces. 

 Take a scene on the slope of these mountains, as they 

 dip into the plain of Malang. Scene : — An open mountain 

 valley, full of coffee plantations, with small scute ed 

 villages, into which opens a deep mountain glen, crj •. ded 

 with the rankest luxuriance of tropical vegetation, groups 

 of tree ferns and great broad-leaved plants, so as to arch 

 over and frequently hide altogether the full brook 

 that comes flashing and roaring down the rocks in a 

 succession of rapids, varied by waterfalls ; the road, 

 narrow, steep, and slippery, as it winds down the sides of 

 the glen, expands into a broad green lane, with an ex- 

 quisite carpet of turf as it opens on the more level lands " 

 (pp. 238, 239). 



Like every other man who is fond of the sea, we find 

 him exclaiming, '" I confess I am getting more and more 

 enamoured of a sailor's life, and regret I did not know 

 the navy early enough to enter it. I see it would have 

 suited me exactly" (p. 251}. 



But Mr. Jukes was destined to be a geologist. On 

 the return of t'ne good ship F/j', in June 1846, he only 

 allowed himself a few weeks at home before he had 

 again " signed articles " to Sir H. T. de la Beche, then 

 Director-General of the Geological Survey, and in October 

 joined Profs. Ramsay and Forbes at Bala. These appear 

 to have been his most intimate friends, as his letters to 

 Ramsay abundantly attest. His letters to Forbes have, 

 unfortunately, not been presen-ed. To those not con- 

 nected with the Survey, this is the section of the book 

 which it seems to us will be the least interesting, although 

 here and there one comes upon a funny bit or a matter 

 of public interest. 



His fagging away at the geology of the rocks south of 

 Conway forms the subject of many letters, and the solu- 

 tion of their puzzling structure is well given at p. 306. For 



^ For an account of his Newfoundland experiences and travels, see also 

 " Excursions in and about NewfoundL^nd during the years 1S39 and 1840," 

 2 vols. 8vo, London, 1842. See also " Report on the Geology of Newfound- 

 land," folio, 1840. 



