SIR ARCHIBALD GEIKIE MOST NOTED OF SCOTTISH SCIENTISTS 1835 (INTRODUCTORY NOTE) Sir Archibald Geikie was created a knight in 1891 in honor of his services to science, and since that day he has received almost every honor that could fall to a scientist in Great Britain, finally holding the chief scientific rank, as President of the Royal Society from 1908 to 1913. In brief, in his later years, Britain accepted him as her representative man of science. He was primarily a geologist and was Professor of Geology in Edinburgh University until he resigned the post in 1882 to become Director of the geological survey of the kingdom. Sir Archibald Geikie never wrote a complete life of himself, but in his various works of "popular geology" he has quite frequently introduced his own personal experiences. The following attractive description of some of the interesting phases of his youth appeared in his “Geological Sketches at Home and Abroad," published in 1882. MY FIRST GEOLOGICAL EXCURSION IT is an old story now, so far back, indeed, that I hardly like to reckon up the years that have since passed away. But clear and bright does it stand in my memory, notwithstanding, that quiet autumnal afternoon, with its long country ramble to an old quarry, the merry shouts of my schoolmates, the endless yarns we span by the way, and the priceless load of stones we bore homeward over those weary miles, when the sun had sunk, red and fiery, in the west, and the shadows of twilight began to deepen the gloom of the woods. Many a country ramble have I made since then, but none, perhaps, with so deep and hearty an enjoyment, for it opened up a new world, into which a fancy fresh from the Arabian Knights and Don Quixote could adventurously ride forth. Up to that time my leisure hours, after school lessons were learnt, and all customary games were played, had been given to laborious mechanical contrivances, based sometimes on most preposterous principles. For a while I believed I had discovered perpetual motion. Day and night the vision haunted me of a wheel turning, turning, in endless revolutions; and what was not this wheel to accomplish? It was to be the motive-power in every manufactory all through the country, to the end of time, to be called by my name, just as other pieces of mechanism bore the names of other inventive worthies, in that treasure of a book "The Century of Inventions." Among various contrivances I remember striving hard to construct a boat that should go through the water by means of paddles, to be worked by a couple of men, or, failing them, by a horse; but though I found (if my memory serve me) that my hero, the old Marquis of Worcester, had anticipated the invention by almost two hundred years, I could not succeed in getting the paddles to move except when the boat was out of the water, and so the grand contrivance, that might have made its discoverer famous in every harbor in the kingdom, fell to the ground. Saturday afternoons were always observed by us as a consecrated holiday-time, all school-work being then consigned to a delightful oblivion. To learn a lesson during these hours was regarded as something degenerate and wholly unworthy of the dignity of a schoolboy. Besides, we had always plenty of work of some kind to fill up the time, and what the nature of that work was to be for the ensuing Saturday had usually been determined long before the coveted Saturday came. Sometimes, if the weather was dull, my comrades repaired to my room (which we dignified as "the workshop") to hear a disquisition on the last invention, or to help if they could in removing some troublesome and apparently insuperable mechanical difficulty. Or we planned a glorious game of cricket, or golf, or football, that seldom came to a close until the evening grew too dark for longer play. In spring-time we would sally forth into the country to some well-remembered bank, where the primroses and violets bloomed earliest, and return at dusk, bringing many a bunch for those at home. The summer afternoons often found us loitering, rod in hand, along the margin of a shady streamlet, in whose deeper pools the silvery troutlet loved to feed. And it fed, truly, with little danger from us. The writhing worm (we never soared to the use of the fly), though ever so skillfully and unfeelingly twined round the hook, failed to allure the scaly brood, which we could see darting up and down the current without so much as a nibble at our tempting bait. Not so, however, with another member of that tribe, the little stickleback, or "beardie," as we called it, to which we had the most determined and unreasonable antipathy. The cry of "A beardie! a beardie!" from one of our party was the sign for every rod and stick to be thrown down on the bank, and a general rush to the spot where the enemy of the trout had been seen. Off went stockings and shoes, and in plunged the wearer, straight to the large stone in mid-channel under which the foe was supposed to be lurking. Cautiously were the fingers passed into the crevices and round the base of the stone, and the little victim, fairly caught at last in his den, was thrown in triumph to the bank, where many a stone was at hand to end his torments and his life. 'Tis an old story, truly; but I remember as if it had been yesterday, how my Saturday employments were changed, and how the vagrant, careless fancies of the schoolboy passed into the settled purposes that have molded the man. I had passed a Saturday afternoon alone, and next day as usual met my comrades at church. On comparing notes, I found that the previous afternoon they had set out for some lime-quarries, about four miles off, and had returned laden with wondersplants of strange form, with scales, teeth, and bones of uncouth fishes, all embedded in the heart of the stone, and drawn out of a subterranean territory of almost fabulous extent and gloom. Could anything more marvelous have been suggested to a youthful fancy? The caverns of the Genii, even that of the Wonderful Lamp, seemed not more to be coveted. At least the new cave had this great advantage over the old ones, that I was sure it was really true; a faint suspicion having begun to arise that, possibly, after all, the Eastern caverns might have no more tangible existence than on the pages of the story-book. But here, only four miles from my own door, was a real cavern, mysterious beyond the power |