CHAPTER XII
Educational and Administrative Work
With his appointment in 1882 to the Murchison Chair of Geology and Mineralogy in Edinburgh University to succeed his brother Sir Archibald Geikie, a new epoch began in James Geikie’s career. For some years he had been District Surveyor on the Scottish Survey, a post of considerable responsibility, and requiring the exercise of tact and firmness, but one which presented most valuable opportunities to a keen geologist. The Scottish Survey at that time had an exceptionally strong personnel, and in pure field geology was setting a standard of excellence which has rarely been surpassed. Several of his colleagues came to be recognised in the course of a few years as scientific men of the highest distinction, and among them there was a spirit of camaraderie and of friendly emulation in research which made their daily tasks a constant source of novelty and of unflagging interest. To many of his colleagues, such as Peach, Horne, Jack, Croll, Skae, and Irvine, James Geikie had been indebted for important information and for the most searching criticism, combined with unselfish appreciation of the value of his work. The ground surveyed had most of it been previously examined only in a quite unexhaustive way, and had consequently the attraction of novelty; it was also of very varied structure, and, more important from his point of view, it was rich in evidence of glacial action. No better training ground for a field-geologist who intended to devote himself to the study of glaciation could well be imagined.
Among the Scottish geological staff James Geikie’s position as a field-geologist and as a glacialist was fully recognised, and he had the unquestioning support of his colleagues. His life was full of variety and interest. No doubt, like other men, he had made mistakes and had been severely handled by some of his critics. Some of his early work on the Silurian volcanic rocks of Ayrshire, for example, had suffered greatly from his insufficient knowledge of the chemical and mineralogical foundations on which geology rests.
Probably this criticism taught him to be more careful in speculation and more critical in accepting evidence. But his field work, as a whole, was of the highest standard. His field maps of Carboniferous and Devonian ground proved to be exceptionally thorough and accurate. In these early years, of course, it was not intended to execute a survey on a very minute scale. The large area upon which each surveyor was expected to report each year prevented him from spending more than a limited time on a small district. Moreover, the literature of the geology of Scotland was as yet by no means large. Many of the more specialised branches of geology, such as petrology, were as yet in a very rudimentary state. Perhaps on that account the field-geologist was expected to be more of an all-round geologist, and to rely less on the guidance of specialists than his successors at the present time.
The opportunities presented to him he had made use of to the fullest. He was a born observer. The retentiveness of his memory for localities and for geological details was extraordinary; but that he did not trust to it exclusively his well-filled note-books bear witness. What distinguished him specially, however, was his power of maintaining his interest in the abstract questions of geology and the indomitable perseverance and industry with which he pursued his researches in spite of the distractions of field work. Not many geologists after an arduous day in the open air could sit down, as was his habit, and spend many hours in literary work, or in the task of mastering the papers, in many foreign languages, in which the progress of glacial geology was recorded. Even admitting that he was a ready writer, we must acknowledge that his power of work at this time was enormous, and we cannot wonder that at times he felt on the verge of a breakdown.
The testimonials which he had printed when making application for the Professorship of Geology in Edinburgh show how thoroughly his reputation as a scientist was established in Europe and America. His book on The Great Ice Age receives high praise from Norwegian, Swedish, Swiss, German, Italian, and American geologists, and among his British supporters he could number Darwin, Evans, and Hooker.
It was not, as already seen, without reluctance that James Geikie decided to leave the Geological Survey. The earnest scientific spirit in which its work was conducted, the intimate fellowship with scientific men of kindred spirit, and the free open-air life had great attractions for him. The academic life was new to him, and must have seemed at first a cabined and cribbed existence compared with that of a field-geologist. Yet there is no doubt the choice was a wise one. In the higher departments of Survey work his duties would have been mostly of an administrative nature, and much of his time would have been taken up by routine business, very largely of a non-geological character, which would certainly have proved uncongenial. His opportunities of visiting the field would also have been much curtailed. Residing in Edinburgh, he could keep in intimate touch with his former colleagues of the Survey, and glean the most valuable results of their work when they returned to the office each year. They were now beginning the survey of the North and West Highlands, and were to undertake investigations of a kind with which he was quite unacquainted. A good deal of new information on glacial geology was being collected by them year by year, and of course communicated to him regularly. But the main work in hand was the unravelling of the intricate history of the Highlands and the palæontology and petrology of the older rocks of Scotland. This was destined to yield most brilliant results, and the Scottish Survey was to become more famous even than it had been in the days of Sir Andrew Ramsay; but these fields of investigation were not those which he had chosen for his own especial study, and there can be no doubt that as a university professor, with ample time for research in any branch of his subject which appealed to him, he was able to follow out his own line of work far more untrammelled than he would have been as an officer of the Geological Survey.
To the execution of the duties of his Chair he devoted himself with characteristic thoroughness and energy. His brother had combined the office of Director of the Geological Survey of Scotland with the Murchison Professorship, but James Geikie was free to give his whole time to university work. At first, at any rate, he had little spare time on his hands. Well versed in Scottish geology and in the physical and structural divisions of the science, he had also a wide knowledge of stratigraphical geology and of the geological structure of Europe and North America. He worked hard to increase his knowledge of mineralogy, petrology, and palæontology, even setting up a laboratory to carry out mineral assays. Ever a skilful draughtsman, he prepared with his own hand many drawings of landscapes, geological sections, and the microscopic structure of rocks. He was always rather averse to the use of the lantern to illustrate his lectures, and preferred large wall diagrams, many of which had cost great pains to make. From every available source he collected specimens of rocks, minerals, and fossils. He was unsparing in his efforts to make his subject as interesting to his students as possible, and to relieve them of the tedious work of taking voluminous manuscript notes. For this purpose he prepared long series of memoranda, and had copies of them struck off by a primitive duplicating apparatus.
As a lecturer he had rather an easy-going, colloquial style, which undoubtedly had the merit of catching and holding the attention of even the least intellectual of his audience. He spoke fast, and covered a very large part of his subject in the course of the one hundred lectures which constituted the work of the winter class, but by the help of the memoranda above mentioned his students had little difficulty in keeping abreast of his progress. Brimful of humour and of fun, he was not above making an occasional joke to his audience; but this aspect of his character was far more in evidence on his Saturday excursions. However long the walk and however unpropitious the weather, there was always a circle of admiring students around him, intent on catching every detail of the amusing stories, reminiscences, and snatches of old ballads or songs, of which he had an unfailing supply. From the first he proved a very successful professor. His course was at that time optional, in the sense that candidates for the recognised degrees of the University did not require to take it. Only students desirous of studying geology for its own sake were to be found on the benches of his class-room. He had always also a fair number of men who were not regular students but engaged in professional work, who desired to widen the range of their intellectual vision, and took an occasional class at the University. Many of these were teachers occupied all day in the schools of the city; and to meet the needs of such men he fixed his hour for lecturing at four o’clock in the afternoon, so as to give them a chance of attending after their day’s work. Many of these students afterwards became his attached personal friends, and in this group were included missionaries home on leave, army men, journalists, doctors taking postgraduate courses at the University, and planters and mining engineers enjoying a long holiday at home after years spent in foreign countries.