May 26, 1904] 



NA TURE 



77 



But the nation, which did not greatly mourn when 

 it sent its sixth King James to the sister country, did 

 not, I thinii, suffer any more acutely when it saw its 

 eminent sons. Sir Rodericlc Murchison, Sir Andrew 

 Ramsay, and Sir Archibald Geikle, filling in uninter- 

 rupted succession the position of Director General of 

 the Geological Survey of Great Britain. England 

 may congratulate herself that she showed no narrow 

 provincial jealousy, but chose" the best men she could 

 find in the island, to direct its geological survey, and 

 their work and their fame are hardly less dear to their 

 countrymen, because their later years were spent, as 

 perhaps their best known work may have been done 

 in the south. They owed their whole training and 

 equipment to the Scottish School of Geology. 



But the note of lamentation was a little too high 

 pitched even for the days when Forbes struck it. It 

 is true that the disputes of the Vulcanists and the 

 Ncptunists were rather forgotten with the names of 

 Hutton and of Jamieson. In Forbes's time it had come 

 to be recognised that both schools were substan- 

 tially in the right — that volcanic forces on the one 

 hand and water and ice on the other are forces almost 

 equally potent in fashioning the earth as men knew 

 it then and as they know it now, and Murchison, 

 Lyell, Ramsay, Geikie brought people to recognise that 

 each of the great elements took its own dominating 

 part in sculpturing our hills and valleys, and in laying 

 down and dislocating the strata of our rocks. In 

 Scotland itself there were plenty of geologists to whose 

 nirinories Sir Archibald Geikie pays loving and grate- 

 ful tribute, who had never left their native Scotland. 

 Two Edinburgh journalists, Charles Maclaren, who 

 founded " The Scotsman," and Hugh Miller, who 

 was " The Witness," spent a great part of their lives 

 in the field of geology. Robert Chambers worked as 

 hard on geological subjects as he did on the improve- 

 ment of the literature and of the lives of his country- 

 men, and Principal Forbes himself, Mr. Peach, and 

 Prof. James Geikie have not allowed the indigenous 

 .Scotchman to lose his claim to a great place among 

 contemporary geologists. 



Sir .-Xrchibald Geiliie shows that his hand has lost 

 none of its cunning, in the delightful word pictures 

 he has given us of some of these famous and only 

 half forgotten men of the early Victorian era. Here 

 '•- a charming cameo : — 



" The illustrious Principal Forbes himself was 

 widely known to the geological world for his re- 

 searches on the glaciers of the Alps and of Norway, 

 and on earth temperature. As one saw him in the 

 street or in the class room, he looked singularly 

 I fragile, and it was not easy to realise how such a 

 seeminglv frail body could have undergone the physical 

 ' xcrtion required for his notable Alpine ascents. His 

 I ill, spare figure might be seen striding from the 

 I iiiversity to the rooms of the Royal Society, of which 

 I for many years he was the active secretary. His clear 

 I brown eyes wore a wistful expression and his pale 

 face and sunken cheeks showed how his well-chiselled 

 le;itures had been preyed on by serious illness. Round 

 his long neck he always wore one of the large ncck- 

 eloths then in vogue, and above this, when out of 

 lidors, he carried a thick muffler, from under which 

 .Is one passed him, one might hear now and then the 



NO. 1804, VOL. 70] 



cough that told of the malady from which he was 

 suffering. In his own house, especially when showing 

 some of the beautifully artistic water-colour drawings 

 which he had made in the course of his wanderings, 

 the then white, almost transparent, hands told the 

 same tale of suffering." 



Take another cameo, equally striking, of that won- 

 derful stonemason and editor, Hugh Miller : — 



" His appearance in the streets was certainly most 

 uneditorial. Above the middle height, strongly built 

 with broad shoulders, a shock of sandy hair, large 

 bushy whiskers, and dressed in rough tweeds, with a 

 shepherd's plaid across his shoulder, he might have 

 been taken for one of the hill farmers, who on market 

 days come to Edinburgh from the uplands of the 

 Lothians He had the true ' Highland man's ling,' 

 the elastic, springy and swift step of the mountaineer, 

 accustomed to traverse shaking bog and rough moor. 

 As he swung down the North Bridge, wielding a stout 

 walking stick, looking straight before him, his eyes 

 apparently fixed on vacancy, and his lips compressed, 

 one could hardly help turning to look after him and 

 to wonder what manner of man he could be." 



Of the innumerable excellent stories which delight 

 the readers of Sir Archibald's reminiscences I shall 

 quote only two, and they shall be in connection 

 with well-known scientific names. One tells us how 

 " the late Professor Tait, so widely known, and so 

 affectionately remembered, used to cite one of the 

 answers he received in a class examination. The 

 question asked was ' Define transparency, trans- 

 lucency, and opacity,' and the following was the 

 answer, ' I am sorry that I cannot give the precise 

 definition of these terms. But I think I understand 

 their meaning, and I will illustrate it by an example. 

 The windows of this class room were originally 

 transparent, they are at present translucent, but if not 

 soon cleaned they will become opaque.' " 



Many old Edinburgh students will still " affec- 

 tionately remember " these occasionally translucent 

 windows, and will know how their never-to-be-for- 

 gotten professor would welcome the answer. 



The only other quotation I shall permit myself is 

 from a letter written by Ami Bou6, a delightful old 

 geological friend of Sir Archibald Geikie 's younger 

 days, who had been educated in Edinburgh, where he 

 was caught up in his youth — about the time of 

 Waterloo — in the maelstrom of the great geological 

 duello between the Vulcanists and the Neptunists. 

 Bou6 wrote an " Esquisse Geologique sur I'Ecosse. " 

 which Sir Archibald describes as "a most valuable 

 treatise, in many respects far in advance of his time." 

 Born in Geneva, with German and Austrian connec- 

 tions, and educated in Scotland, he seems to have 

 spoken most of the tongues of Europe with equal 

 courage and inaccuracy. His Edinburgh days, how- 

 ever, were in 1870 far in the background of his life, 

 but there are few Englishmen or Scotchmen who 

 would have ventured to describe their feelings in a 

 tongue with which they had been familiar in early 

 life, as Ami Boue did, during the calamitous Franco- 

 German war. 



" The dreadful war pre-occupations did take me 

 all time for thinking at scientific matter, and now 

 perhaps that distress will approach till nearer our 



