THE 



GEOLOGICAL MAGAZINE 



NEW SERIES. DECADE V. VOL. X. 



No. VL— JUNE, 1913. 



OI?.XGi-I3^T^^IL. .A^IiTIOLES. 



I. — Eminent Living Geologists. 

 James Geikie, LL.D., D.C.L. (Dimelm.), F.E.S. L. & E., E.G.S. 



Murchison Professor of Geology and Mineralogy and Dean of the Faculty of 

 Science in the University of Edinburgh. 



(WITH A POETEAIT, PLATE IX.) 



rilHE name of Geikie has become as familar to present-day geologists 

 X as those of Murchison, of Sedgwick, or of Lyell were to our 

 immediate predecessors. 



Notices and portraits of his elder brother, Sir Archibald Geikie, 

 K.C.B., the President of the Eoyal Society, have already appeared 

 in the Geological Magazine (see Yol. for 1890, PI. II, pp. 49-51, and 

 1907, PI. I, pp. 1-2) ; it is high time to present that of the younger 

 brother, Professor James Geikie, who occupies the leading place in 

 our science and in geography in ^.dinburgh and its University, and 

 is known everywhere also by his published works, especially by his 

 contributions to Glacial Geology. 



James Geikie was born in Edinburgh August 23, 1839, and after 

 being educated at the High School and the University of his native 

 city, he entered the Geological Survey in 1861, and became a District 

 Surveyor in 1869. 



"In those early days," writes James Geikie, "when I joined the 

 Geological Survey in Scotland, the Survey maps showed only the 

 ' solid geology ' ; the loose superficial deposits known generally as 

 ' drift ' were entirely ignored. It was then decided that the 

 ' drift ■ should henceforth be mapped, and thus my earliest years 

 on the Survey were spent in re-surveying ground which had already 

 been mapped so far as the solid geology was concerned, my work 

 being confined to the insertion on the field-maps of the so-called 

 ' drift ' and peat. From the first, therefore, I became interested in 

 our ' superficial formations ', more especially in the Boulder-clay 

 and the gravels and sands associated with it. My interest in these 

 deposits, however, dates much further back — in fact, to my school 

 days ; so that I did not come to the Survey quite a greenhorn so far 

 as the drifts were concerned, 



" Later on, while mapping in the Southern Uplands, the peat-bogs, 

 with their remains of trees, arrested my attention, and seemed to 

 suggest that the explanation of the phenomena then in vogue was 

 insufiicient. Accordingly my holidays for a few years were spent in 

 the Highlands and Outer Hebrides, for the purpose of increasing my 



decade v. — VOL. X. — NO. VI. 16 



