James Geikie, the Man and the Geologist

by Marion I. Newbigin; Sir J. S. Flett

PART II
GEOLOGICAL WORK
CHAPTER X
The Glacial Problem before James Geikie

In 1861, at the age of twenty-two, James Geikie, as stated in [Chapter II.], became an officer of the Geological Survey and determined to devote his life to scientific work.

For seventy years, ever since the time of the great discussions about the theories of Hutton and Playfair in the closing days of the eighteenth century, the inhabitants of Edinburgh had been keenly alive to the attractions of geological speculation. These older controversies had died down, and the science was gradually establishing itself on a broad basis of recorded facts and observations. It was not yet included among the subjects which had a place of honour in the University curriculum, though the professors of natural history since the time of Jameson had delivered lectures on geology (or geognosy as it was often called). Prof. Edward Forbes, who succeeded Jameson, and Prof. Fleming (of the Theological College) were both accomplished geologists. The Edinburgh Geological Society had been established in 1834, and though it did not as yet publish Transactions, it included many active geologists in the list of its members. Geology, with its mixture of open-air activities, hard facts of observation, and rich opportunities for speculative controversy, has always possessed an attraction for Scotsmen, and many of them have excelled in it. In the Scottish capital in the early sixties the burly figure of Hugh Miller was very well known. His writings, with their curious mixture of geological and theological matters, of fossil fishes and final causes, were very widely read at that time, and the sad tragedy of his death, the result of an overworked brain, was fresh in the memory of all.

A man of very different qualities, but a brilliant and thoroughly reliable geologist, who held a high place in the intellectual life of Edinburgh, was Charles Maclaren, one of the founders and for many years the editor of the Scotsman newspaper. His special field of work was the geology of the district around the Firth of Forth, a region filled with the most striking examples of geological structure and the effects of geological processes. Maclaren was constantly exploring the phenomena of this neighbourhood, and the results of his observations appeared regularly as articles in the Scotsman. No doubt this kept the science prominently before the public; few newspapers at the present time would venture to print columns of exact and rather technical description of the geological features of the district in which they are published. Maclaren died in August 1866, the year in which a second and much enlarged edition of his volume on the Geology of Fife and the Lothians was published. In the same year the Transactions of the Edinburgh Geological Society began to appear, but the Royal Physical Society, a successor of the Wernerian Society, had for several years been issuing Proceedings. Archibald Geikie had read a paper on the Geology of Strath in Skye to the Edinburgh Geological Society in 1853, and among the geologists of note who attended the meetings were Rose, Dr Page, Prof. Foster Heddle, and Dr Hunter of Carluke. Dr Page, afterwards Professor of Geology at Newcastle-on-Tyne, was a well-known popular lecturer on geology, and did a good deal to keep alive an interest in the science.

In later years James Geikie often acknowledged his indebtedness to Prof. George Wilson, and the stimulus he had received from him when a young man bent on scientific studies. Wilson was Professor of Technology in Edinburgh University, a subject no longer included in the University curriculum. It seems to have comprised parts of dynamics, mechanical engineering and applied chemistry. Wilson was a man of great personal charm, exceedingly well informed, and always willing to help young students along the path of learning. He was interested in geology also, and undertook to write the life of Edward Forbes, but finished only the first six chapters, and the work was ultimately completed by Archibald Geikie.

Although James Geikie was always a great reader, it is not likely that he had more than an elementary knowledge of geology when he joined the Survey in 1861. Trained geologists, however, in those days were much less common than they are now, and the Survey was prepared to enrol men who had a good general education and showed special inclination and aptitude for this line of work. Careful personal selection must have been exercised, for many of those who then joined its ranks rose subsequently to high eminence in science. In field geology no better training could have been given than was adopted for these young men. They were sent out day by day with surveyors who had acquired a knowledge of field work, and were inspected regularly by experienced geologists, who corrected their errors and helped to solve their difficulties. As already noted in Part I. (see [p. 20]), his first work was the addition of drift lines to the solid maps of parts of Fife and the Lothians, and the drifts of the low grounds of Central Scotland remained to the close of his life the subject which interested him above all others, and with which he had the fullest acquaintance in the field.

When Geikie began to map both the solid and drift geology of a hitherto unsurveyed district, he was sent to Ayrshire and West Lanarkshire, where he undertook the survey of a large area stretching from Eaglesham southwards to New Cumnock. His brother was mapping, or had already mapped, a broad strip extending inwards from the coast-line and reaching from near Largs in the north to Dailly in the south, while to the east of him was Peach engaged in the survey of Southern Lanarkshire. In those days a fairly large area (several hundred square miles) was assigned to each geologist. The whole district had to be very carefully examined and the results recorded on topographical maps on the scale of six inches to a mile. Each geologist was expected to make a complete examination of his ground and to note all the particulars regarding it. Petrology was as yet in its infancy, and no very minute classification of volcanic rocks was to be expected; but the glacial geology and economic geology were to be carefully investigated and fossil localities noted, though, for the purpose of collecting fossils, the assistance of special officers was provided. The determination of all fossils requiring critical skill was in the hands of the Survey palæontologists. Each geologist surveyed from a hundred to a hundred and fifty miles in a field season, which, allowing for holidays, amounted to seven or eight months, and to do this required regular hard work, much strenuous walking, and the power of concentrating on the general features, and not allowing one’s attention to be absorbed by inconsequent details.

James Geikie seems to have had no difficulty whatever in picking up the essentials of field geology. He was very diligent and had sufficient physical strength for his work. In time he became a great walker, thinking nothing of covering fifty miles in a day. The open-air life suited him perfectly. He had one of the gifts most valuable to a field-geologist, sometimes described as “an eye for the country,” the faculty of interpreting the geological meanings that underlie surface features. Although never a professed palæontologist he had a working knowledge of Carboniferous fossils, and he was always a keen and critical observer of rocks both in a fresh and in a weathered condition. His early maps, judged even by the standards of the present day, were astonishingly good, and always give the impression that he went thoroughly into the evidence so far as it was available. He was cautious and thorough, and as a result of this his maps show very few deletions due to changes of opinion as fuller information was acquired during the progress of his work. From the first he exhibited great ability as a draughtsman, and his maps and sections are not only very clear, well-proportioned, and pleasing to the eye, but show also an individuality which arose from natural gifts, and was not acquired by copying models.

Although at that time geologists on the Survey were not moved about the country so frequently as is now the case, but settled down for several seasons in a well-defined area, James Geikie had no reason to complain of a lack of variety in the ground allotted to him. His early stations in Fife and Kinross included stratified and igneous rocks of Old Red Sandstone and of Carboniferous Age, and in Peeblesshire he made acquaintance with Silurian rocks, which at that time were still very imperfectly understood, and presented many difficult problems then unsolved. It was in Ayrshire, however, that his powers most fully displayed themselves, and the long period of field work in that county from 1865 to 1872 undoubtedly saw the development of his abilities as a field-geologist. In after years many of the best illustrations both of structural geology and of glacial geology that enlivened his books and his lectures were culled from the note-books in which he constantly recorded the results of his observations in that field. From his letters it seems that he disliked the coalfield geology, which necessitated the examination of mining plans, frequent attendance at colliery engineers’ offices, and great absorption in details which are of little general importance. But no one would have suspected this from his field maps, which, if we remember how rapidly his work was done, show much detail of underground structures taken from colliery plans.

In Ayrshire he had for colleagues Sir Archibald Geikie and Dr Peach; one of these was ultimately to select volcanic geology as his province, while the other attained great eminence as a palæontologist. Already James Geikie was absorbed in glacial geology; and each of the trio of geologists, though doing ostensibly the same work, had already chosen the special line of investigation in which he was ultimately to become a master. He had a great affection, too, for the warm-hearted, hospitable people of the west of Scotland, and in “braid Scots” used to relate many humorous episodes in which the sturdy farmers and “sma’ lairds” displayed their pawky humour. No full or adequate account of the work he did in Ayrshire in these years has ever been published. The short descriptions of sheets 22, 23, and 19, published by the Geological Survey, were in large part written by James Geikie, but, owing to the necessities of official publication entailing great brevity, they contain merely an outline of his main conclusions. The geologists who revised that ground forty years after the original survey are unanimous in regretting that more adequate description of the evidence which James Geikie had collected was not placed before the public.