ferred his patronage from Adair to the more pushful Slezer, probably because he was tired of Adair's methods and procrastination. All the work that Adair did was splendidly done, but one feels a sense of mystification, when one finds that after 1686 everything seems to have gone to pieces, for no really effective work, beyond the maps of Tay, Montrose, and Kincardine Coast (and apparently some West Coast maps), appears to have come from his hands in the next twenty-five years.

As to Adair's age, no details are known, but if we assume that the average man exhibits his best talents about the age of twenty-seven, and note that Adair's first work appears to have been finished about 1681, it might be fair to assume the date of his birth as about 1654-56. Then, as his best work was done by 1686-five years later this would bring out that his county maps were drawn when he had reached thirty-two or so. The setting out to survey the West Coast in 1698 would bring us, on this reckoning, to the conclusion that he had reached forty-five, when he had passed his prime. Thus, when his Atlas was issued five years later, in 1703, he would be about fifty. We hear of him a little later, when an Act of tonnage for his benefit was made in 1705, but after that nothing is known of him, and he passes out of our ken as silently as he entered it. But for the fact that a payment was made to his widow in 1723, on her handing over the unpublished manuscripts which she had, the period of his death would have been absolutely unknown, and it is only inference that suggests that his death might have taken place in the previous year. There is, of course, as much likelihood that he might have died many years before, and that only necessity compelled his widow to part with the manuscripts, at the date given.

He

As to Adair's status in life, it is not easy to hazard a guess. calls himself a " mathematician," and as he was admitted to the Royal Society (London) in 1688 (the entry in the Royal Society books gives no clue as to his qualifications), and as his disbursements in connection with his maps were on a fairly large scale before he got back his outlays, one cannot but think he was of good family and education, with a small income, sufficiently large to enable him to go on with his work, without thinking wholly of the remuneration, like Slezer. In the Canongate Register of Marriages, Jean Adair, daughter of John Adair, Geographer, was married to John Ramsay, writer, Edinburgh, on 30th July 1715, so that an entry of this kind testifies to some social standing. The name of Adair also seems to be associated with Wigtownshire, so that one would be inclined to look to that county for his early history.

There is one circumstance, generally overlooked, which must have had considerable effect on the prospect of his "Sea Maps" (though not his "Land Maps"), in the publication of Captain Grenvile Collins's Coasting Pilot in 1693. This splendid book of Maps of the Coast of Britain was begun in 1686, and Collins completed his work in seven years, and, even although the maps are not of such exquisite detail in Scotland as are those of Adair, the issue of fifty-three maps in seven years seems fine work, in comparison with Adair's eighteen or nineteen maps in twenty-five years. It is rather interesting to notice that Moxon, Clark, and Moll, who were at work engraving Adair's maps, were employed by Collins in engraving the maps for his book also. There is no evidence that Collins used any of Adair's outline for his work, yet it must have had a deterring effect on the publication of a set of maps of the coast for Scotland only.

In collating the above material, I have to express indebtedness for the very friendly assistance given by the Keepers of the British Museum, Bodleian Library, and Advocates' Library in affording every facility to photograph and study the maps, so that the one could be compared with the other, and the facts brought together.

Note on the Manuscripts in the Advocates' Library.

It will be noted that four of the manuscript maps are in duplicate, and in each case the Advocates' Library copy is less complete. The title is shorter, there is no dedication, and the outlines towards the edges are not filled in. At this stage it is impossible to say which is the original and which the copy, because the pinmarks indicate that the duplicate was reproduced by laying a completed map on the top of a blank sheet and pricking through the paper. The outline was then inked in between the pin marks. With the exception of Clackmannan and Midlothian, the watermark on the paper, an L, with a small loop at the top indicating a D or P, shows that the same paper has been used on all the manuscripts.

JAMES GEIKIE: HIS LIFE AND WORK.1

THE members of the Royal Scottish Geographical Society will welcome this brief but interesting memorial of the life and work of their former President, whose devotion to the interests of the Society, from its earliest inception, did so much to ensure its successful inauguration and its continued welfare.

In happier times we might have looked for a fuller account of James Geikie's many activities; yet, although the exigencies of war conditions have compelled condensation of their material, the authors have succeeded in bringing together within a comparatively few pages the leading facts of his life, and the essential features of his work as teacher and geologist.

For her description of his earlier years Dr. Newbigin has naturally been dependent upon the letters, diaries, and personal recollections placed at her disposal by the members of his family, and his old friends and colleagues. This material she has used with discrimination, and the portrait that she presents is life-like and appreciative. From his family history we learn that his musical and artistic tastes were derived from his father's family, while to his maternal grandfather, the adventurous sea captain, we may trace his love of travel and delight in the sea:-it is perhaps more than a coincidence that two of his sons are now wearing the uniform of His Majesty's Navy. The year 1861 was, possibly, the crisis of Geikie's career, when, at the age of twenty-two, he escaped from the uncongenial atmosphere and dull drudgery of a printing-office to join the Geological Survey, and entered upon what were to prove the happiest years of his life. The free, roving existence, much of it passed among the beautiful scenery of the Borders, and the friendly intercourse with men of every degree, appealed to many sides of his personality, while the unrivalled opportunities of first-hand observation led to the accumulation of a store of facts, to bear fruit later in his masterly exposition of the glacial history of Scotland.

Miss Newbigin outlines the course of his labours in Ayrshire, Lanarkshire, and the Border counties, and recounts a few of the humorous experiences he met with in his wanderings. She also refers to his great powers of work during his middle years, when, in addition to his official duties, he was preparing the volumes that were to bring him fame.

In 1882 he was called upon to face the question of exchanging the free, open-air life of the Survey for the closer atmosphere of a University class-room. The decision, for many reasons, was a difficult one, and cost him much anxiety, but the choice once made, Geikie threw himself with characteristic energy into this new field of activity, with the result that the thirty-two years of his tenure of the Chair of Geology saw a great advance in the methods of geological teaching and in the popularity of the subject among the students.

Unlike some men of science, whose devotion to their chosen subject seems to narrow their field of interest, James Geikie's outlook on life was broad and sympathetic. Apart from his remarkable knowledge of the literature, native and foreign, bearing on his special studies, he was a man of wide and varied reading, and his love for and close acquaintance with all that is best in English prose and poetry are reflected in the lucidity and precision of his style. He held strongly that scientific facts should be presented in the clearest and most literary English at the writer's command, and often expressed his abhorrence of the slovenly methods of too many of our scientific writers.

Of strong personality and vivid imagination; nervous and quicktempered, but by nature genial and warm-hearted; staunch in friendship and formidable in controversy, James Geikie was one of those of whom it may well be said,

"He warmed both hands before the fires of life,"

and brought keen powers of enjoyment to every happy chance of social and intellectual intercourse that crossed his path. As Miss Newbigin has happily phrased it:

"He gave freely to the world of his labours, to his intimates of his affection, and he received much-honour from his fellows, and, what he prized more, the love of those who knew the real man beneath the northern shyness and reserve.

"All is transitory-his conclusions may be disputed, new lights may be thrown on problems which seemed to him conclusively solved; but the

•

nation which can produce such men can never be poor, and his uprightness, steadfastness, and simplicity of character enabled him to leave an abiding imprint upon his day and generation."

The second part of the volume is devoted to an excellent, though necessarily somewhat condensed, account of Geikie's geological work from the pen of Dr. Flett, himself a former University assistant of the Professor. Dr. Flett sketches the rise and progress of the study of glacial geology in Scotland, and points out that Charles Maclaren and Robert Chambers, both Edinburgh men, were among the first to follow Agassiz in attributing the drifts, striated surfaces, and carried boulders of this country to the action of land rather than of floating ice.

On the appearance of the Great Ice Age James Geikie was "immediately accorded the place of protagonist in the cause," and his views as to the dominance of glacier ice over that of icebergs soon met with general acceptance.

Dr. Flett lays stress on the influence of Andrew Ramsay, "a man after his own heart," upon Geikie's work, and regards the latter "as the direct successor of Ramsay in the line of scientific thought." The views of another old Survey colleague, James Croll, author of Climate and Time, as to the cause of the Glacial Period were fully accepted by Geikie; and, although in later years Croll's theory was subjected to destructive criticism, Geikie made it clear "that, in his opinion, if Croll's hypothesis failed, no other explanation could be regarded as adequate." In the first edition of his Great Ice Age he had adumbrated his belief in the alternation of warm and cold phases during the Glacial Period. In the later editions of that work and in his Prehistoric Europe, he took up a bolder attitude, elaborating his views and supporting his position with evidence drawn from regions furth of Scotland. But the doctrine of inter-glacial periods, in the extreme form advocated by Geikie, was to prove a fertile source of controversy, and the long-drawn battle between inter- and mono-glacialists still rages.

Be the result of this battle what it may, there can be no dispute as to the permanent value of the general principles set forth in his writings, and he will always be recognised as having laid the foundations for the accurate and systematic study of glacial conditions in this and other lands.

The volume is illustrated with four portraits taken at different times of his life. Of these, that facing page 116, from a photograph in the year 1899, is perhaps that which recalls the genial Professor as one likes best to remember him. LIONEL W. HINXMAN.

PROCEEDINGS OF THE ROYAL SCOTTISH GEOGRAPHICAL

SOCIETY.

MEETING OF COUNCIL.

At a meeting of Council held on January 4th the Diploma of Fellowship was conferred upon Mr. William Mackay and upon Mr.

Charles Matheson, M.A., author of the volume on Moray and Nairn in the Cambridge Series of County Geographies.

LECTURES IN FEBRUARY.

On Thursday, February 28th, Mr. S. G. Cheng will lecture in the Synod Hall, Edinburgh, on "China's Geography: Historical and Social," at 4.30 P.Μ.

Afternoon Lectures. The following afternoon lectures will be delivered during February in the Hall of the Royal Society, 24 George Street, at 4.30 P.M.:-February 7, Dr. Marion Newbigin, "Alsace-Lorraine"; February 21, Mr. George G. Chisholm, "The Economic Geography of the Western Front."

GEOGRAPHICAL NOTES.

EUROPE.

Alsace-Lorraine. We have received from the "Ligue Patriotique des Alsaciens Lorrains," 18 Green Street, Leicester Square, London, W.C.2, two pamphlets on Alsace-Lorraine, and a communication to the effect that the League, of which Lord Balfour of Burleigh is the Honorary President, will supply lecturers and speakers, free of fees, to address meetings. One of the two pamphlets is entitled The Question of Alsace-Lorraine, and gives a succinct historical account of the subject. It may be recommended as giving the essentials of the problem in convenient form. We note two interesting German quotations which may be reproduced here. On May 20, 1871, Treitschke declared that the day would come when the Alsatian peasant from the remotest village of the Vosges would exclaim-"Oh, the happiness and joy of being a citizen of the Empire!" But forty-two years later, after the Saverne incident, Herr von Jagow said concisely-" In Alsace-Lorraine German troops are in enemy country."

Another interesting quotation is given from the Rhenish Westphalian Gazette, the organ of Krupp's works. This states that while AlsaceLorraine was originally annexed on account of its strategic importance, it is now of value to Germany because of (1) the petroleum of Pechelbronn in Lower Alsace, which has proved of considerable use during the present war; (2) the potash of Upper Alsace, of importance in the manufacture of munitions; (3) the iron of Lorraine. In regard to the last point it is said "that we cannot think without terror of what would have happened to us had not the mines of Lorraine been in our possession."

AMERICA.

British Guiana - Steps are being taken in this Colony with a view to the opening-up of the pasture lands of the interior as a cattle-grazing country. Hitherto in the colony development has been almost confined