Professor Geikie Research Articles

Professor Geikie’s 1880 paper, ‘Rock-weathering, as illustrated in Edinburgh Churchyards’, inProceedings of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, Vol. 10, pages 518–532: Contribution to weathering and cross-disciplinary necrogeography within physical geography

This Classics Revisited paper examines the contribution of Geikie’s seminal paper, presented to The Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1880, to physical geography as part of geomorphology, weathering, and necrogeography. From this standpoint, physical geography is approached as interdisciplinary, housing geomorphology and cross-disciplinary and applied research in the areas of climate and the environment affecting urban settings. Mortuary evidence is specifically addressed here, as Geikie presented observations and discussion of older churchyards situated in Edinburgh, Scotland. His emphasis permitted a focus on rock-air interactions of funerary remains carved from calcareous materials, sandstones and flagstones, and granites. The former (marbles and limestones) represent the main content of the paper, with an emphasis on superficial solution, internal disintegration, and curvature and fracture affecting calcareous rocks. Geikie’s areas of research interest are still prevalent in the literature today and can be construed as a pioneering work, representing a formative part of rock weathering affected by both climatic and environmental geomorphology in an urban setting.

Meltwater drainage channels and other glacial phenomena of the Highland Border Belt from Cortachy to the Bervie Water

T he marginal channels cut by meltwater during the retreat of the ‶Strathmore Ice″—that portion of the Second Ice-sheet of Northern Scotland which traversed Eastern Forfar, Kincardine, and Aberdeen—are very distinctive. All of them fall towards the north; and, quite independently of the characteristic red clays and erratics (Old Red Sandstone lavas and sediments), prove that the ice retreated from north to south, and advanced from south to north. These channels, however, do not mark the furthest inland extension of the Strathmore Ice, since they could be cut only on ground left free of ice by the shrinkage, either of the ice from the interior of the country that joined the coastwise current, or of the coastwise current itself, or by the shrinkage of both. Study of the ground along the Highland border from Cortachy to the Bervie Water shows that the Strathmore Ice everywhere transgressed the boundary fault. Marginal channels seam the schist country up to a mile or a little more north of the fault; but characteristic boulder clay from Strathmore has been found in the valleys of the Bervie Water and North Esk one and a half miles, and on the West Water fully two miles north of the boundary fault; while characteristic erratics occur in Glen Clova nearly four miles, and in Glen Prosen at least two miles, north of the margin of the Old Red Sandstone. This transgression was noted for Forfarshire, without mention of precise localities or extent, by Professor Geikie in ‶The Intercrossing of Erratics in Glacial Deposits″ ( Scottish Naturalist , 1881; ‶Fragments of Earth Lore,″ 1893, pp. 196-199). The carry of erratics and boulder clay was in all probability not ‶from the east and south-east″ as Professor Geikie states, but from the south-south-west and south: moreover they penetrate furthest into the Highland area where the schist escarpment is breached by the largest streams. The Third Ice-sheet, which did not envelop the whole north-east of Scotland, also left characteristic ground moraine and erratics, as well as overflow channels, marginal and direct. The relations of the Second and Third Ice-sheets, particularly the extent to which the latter overlapped the area previously occupied by the Strathmore Ice, may be determined by a study of the deposits and channels belonging to each. From such a study it is clear that in the area discussed the Third Ice-sheet did not in general extend quite as far as the boundary fault, just reached it on the West Water, passed almost a mile beyond it on the Bervie Water, transgressed it for fully a mile and over a considerable area on the North Esk, and for a distance as yet uncertain on the South Esk and Prosen.

I.—The Influence of James Geikie's Researches on the Development of Glacial Geology

My first duty is to express my cordial thanks to the Council and Fellows of this Society for electing me as President in succession to the late Professor Geikie. I have accepted the honour with great reluctance, for I am conscious of the fact that others have far stronger claims, and have waived their claims under very exceptional circumstances. But I may take this opportunity of assuring the Fellows that since they have been pleased to confirm the recommendation of the Council, I shall take an active interest in the affairs of the Society and do my best to promote its welfare.The list of papers read during the past session shows that important contributions relating to different branches of science have been made to the Society. Notwithstanding the strain caused by the war, the output of original work is noteworthy. In this connection reference may be made to some researches having a direct bearing on the war. Last session the Council appointed a Committee, composed of leading scientists, to conduct investigations in connection with submarines, aeroplanes, asphyxiating gas, and high explosives.

Baselevel, Grade and Peneplain

Baselevel, Grade and Peneplain

Professor Geikie's Classification of the North European Glacial Deposits

Next article FreeProfessor Geikie's Classification of the North European Glacial DepositsK. KeilhackK. Keilhack Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by The Journal of Geology Volume 5, Number 2Feb. - Mar., 1897 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/607723 Views: 85 PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

Professor Geikie on the Glacial Period

Professor Geikie on the Glacial Period

At the request of the Council, Professor Geikie delivered an Address on Recent Advances in European Pleistocene Geology

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Professor Geikie in Arran

AMONG the many features which have lent attraction to the study of geology at Edinburgh University, Prof. Geikie's field demonstrations have always held a conspicuous place. Few favourable Saturdays have been allowed to pass, on which he might not be seen rambling with his class through some wooded glen, or climbing some rugged brae, with hammer, sketch-book, and mapcase, and every now and then stopping to point out some striking rock section, or to examine a “find,” made perchance by one of his students. But at the end of the session, when a week or ten days are devoted to the exploration of some district possessing an interesting geological structure, the “long excursion” is always looked forward to with the keenest delight by professor as well as by students. The first long class-excursion ten years ago was to Arran, and the Professor decided that his last should also be to that island—famous alike for the beauty of its scenery and for the interest attaching to its geological framework. Quarters were taken up at Corrie Hotel on Monday April 24, and that afternoon saw the whole party, numbering about a score, roaming with bags and hammers along the coast towards North Glen Sannox, and making the acquaintance of the coarse red sandstones and brecciated white quartz conglomerates of the Upper Old Red, or Lower Calciferous Sandstone series, which extend in a broad belt round that part of the island. Further inland, a coarse conglomerate made up of well-rounded pebbles of pinkish quartz interstratified with characteristic dark chocolate-coloured sandstones and occasional argillaceous beds, was ascertained some years ago by the Professor to belong to the Lower Old Red Sandstone, and to be brought down by a fault against the schists that fringe the mountainous granitic core of the northern half of the island. He had already made some progress with a geological map of the island on a scale of six inches to a mile, and he now purposes to continue this work with the co-operation of his students. Resuming his geological boundary-lines at Glen Sannox, the party was soon scouring the hillsides far and near, in search of rock-sections and exposures, while he, map in hand, remained within ear-shot, and superintended operations, marking down the lines of junction, and unravelling the geological structures with the skilful hand of one long acquainted with the art of geological mapping. In this way several miles of the boundary between the granite and schists were mapped. In the course of a walk along the steep craggy Suidhe Fearghus, on the north side of Glen Sannox, the trend of this remarkable ridge was found to coincide with that of the vertical joint in the granite, and the deep gashes which indent its profile were observed to be due sometimes to cross joints, sometimes to basalt dykes which, decomposing, have weathered down much faster than the surrounding granite. The view from Caisteal Abhail, the highest peak (2735 feet) of the ridge, was magnificent, extending southwards to Ireland, and northwards to the mountains of Mull and Arrochar. On the way down a dyke much more vitreous and obsidian-like than the other Arram pitch-stone, was crossed on the ridge between Caisteal Abhail and Cir Mhor, at the head of Glen Sannox. Another day the steps of the party were turned southwards, and as the red rocks of Glen Shurig, which runs inland from Brodick, had hitherto yielded no organic remains capable of identifying their precise geological position, the Professor instituted a methodical search, which resulted in the discovery of numerous more or less distinct impressions of the lycopod psilophyton, clearly proving them to be, as he had inferred, of Lower Old Red Sandstone age. Striking southward into Glen Dubh, the geologists then crossed the very perfect series of moraines, left there by the last valley glacier, and returning by Glen Cloy, and the well-known pitchstone dyke behind the Brodick Schoolhouse. The fossiliferous limestones and shales of Corrie were also well explored, and the position of this strata far down in the heart of the red sandstone series was remarked.

XX. A German Professor’s Views of the Geology of Arran, translated from A. von Lasaulx’s “Aus Irland,” Bonn, 1878, with Remarks

[A visit by Professor A. von Lasaulx, of Breslau, to the Glasgow meeting of the British Association in 1876 has resulted in a book entitled as above, recording chiefly the geological investigations of the author in Ireland, where he made a more lengthened tour under the guidance of our late Vice-President, the present Director-General of the Geological Survey of Ireland, Professor Edward Hull, to whom the book is affectionately inscribed; but the two last chapters are devoted to the geology of Scotland. In his introductory remarks under this head the author is full of graceful acknowledgments, and has a word of praise and thanks for every one from whom he derived information, printed or oral. In connection with the geology of the West Coast and of Arran, honourable mention is made most prominently of the members of the Geological Society of Glasgow, and Messrs. Armstrong, D. Robertson, Young, Thomson, and Wunsch are each quoted and thanked in turn for the information supplied. For general geology Professor Geikie’s “Geology of the British Isles,” so far as it relates to Scotland, seems to have been the author’s chief guide, and the views of the Director-General of the Scottish Geological Survey are endorsed, or, at all events, not controverted in any essential point. In the first chapter, relating exclusively to the geology of the mainland, Professor von Lasaulx does not advance any special theories of his own; in the second chapter, however, devoted exclusively to Arran, the authorities are not so numerous, and This 250-word extract was created in the absence of an abstract

4. Report on the Fossil Plants collected by the Geological Survey of Scotland in Eskdale and Liddesdale

Through the kindness of Professor Geikie, Director-General of the Geological Survey of Great Britain, I have had the pleasure of examining the fossil plants collected by the Scottish Geological Survey in Eskdale and Liddesdale.The collection contains about four hundred and fifty specimens, a number of which, however, were too imperfect for further identification than that of the genus.Eight of the plants I believe to be new species, and a few of the others, as far as I am aware, are now recorded for the first time as occurring in Scottish rocks.

IV.—On some new Crustaceans from the Lower Carboniferous Rocks of Eskdale and Liddesdale

By the permission of Professor A. C. Ramsay, LL.D., F.R.S., Director-General of the Geological Survey of Great Britain and Ireland, and Professor Geikie, LL.D., F.R.S., Director of the Geological Survey of Scotland, I have been permitted to describe several new Crustaceans which have come under my notice in my capacity of Acting Palæontologist to the Scotch Survey. They are from the cement-stone group of the Calciferous Sandstone series of the Scottish border, and, with a very few exceptions, were got from one locality on the river Esk, about four miles south of Langholm, in Dumfriesshire, and were almost all collected by A. Macconochie, Fossil Collector to the Geological Survey of Scotland. They belong to two orders, viz., Phyllopoda and Decapoda.

III.—Report on Fossil Fishes collected by the Geological Survey of Scotland in Eskdale and Liddesdale. Part I.—Ganoidei

I am indebted to the kindness of Professor Ramsay, Director-General, and of Professor Geikie, Director of the Scottish Branch of the Geological Survey of Great Britain, for the privilege of examining and describing a remarkable collection of fossil fish-remains from the Lower Carboniferous rocks (Calciferous Sandstone Series) of Eskdale and Liddesdale. Most of the specimens were collected by Mr Arthur Macconochie, one of the collectors attached to the Scottish Geological Survey; and Mr Walter Park of Brooklyn Cottage, Langholm, has also willingly co-operated in the search, so far as the district of Eskdale is concerned. I have myself also had the pleasure of twice visiting Eskdale, along with Mr Macconochie and Mr B. N. Peach, and on these occasions I obtained a few specimens for my own collection.

Remarks by the Vice-President, David Milne Home, LL.D., on delivering the Makdougall-Brisbane Prize to Professor Geikie

The Council having awarded the Makdougall-Brisbane Prize, for the biennial period 1876–78, to Professor Geikie, for his Memoir “On the Old Red Sandstone of Western Europe” published in the Society's Transactions 1877–78, which forms one of an important series of contributions by Professor Geikie to the advancement of geological science, the Medal was presented to him by the Chairman, with the following remarks:—IN accordance with what he was told was the practice on such occasions, he would shortly explain, first, the purpose for which this particular prize was instituted, and, second, the nature of the memoir and work by Professor Geikie for which the prize had been awarded to him.

1. References, by Dr Charles Maclaren and Professor Geikie, to Striae and Boulders on the Pentlands

Mr M'Laren, in his “Geology of Fife and the Lothians,” states:—“There are few opportunities of observing ‘groovings’ on the Pentland Hills. I noticed them, however, at Westwater of Dunsyre, on the top of a thick bed of hard sandstone, from which 12 or 14 feet of alluvium had been removed. The dressings pointed exactly east and west; and the evidence was the more satisfactory, as the direction of the stream on whose bank the rock was situated, and of the valley in which the stream flowed, was south and north. They were very distinct, the larger groovings being about 1½ inch broad, and ths of an inch deep.

On some recently discovered fossiliferous beds in the Silurian rocks of the Pentland Hills

A few years ago I read a short notice before this Society on some blocks of Fossiliferous Limestone which I had discovered in the Conglomerate at Habbie’s Howe, in the Pentland Hills. This Conglomerate, considered by Professor Geikie to be of Old Red Sandstone age, obtains a considerable thickness in this locality, and is well exposed in the gorge through which the Logan Burn runs from the higher valley into the lower about half-a-mile above the Loganlee reservoir. The Conglomerate is mostly composed of rounded and lenticular pebbles and blocks of Silurian grit and shale, without any appearance of fossils; but while examining the beds I discovered several masses of limestone, which upon inspection proved to be very fossiliferous. The limestone of which these blocks are composed has a coarse granular appearance, and is largely made up of corals of the genera Halysites, Heliolites, Favosites, and Petraia. Along with fragments of Encrinites and several species of Brachiopoda, it also contains a peculiar rounded body of a grayish colour, which appeared like a pebble in the limestone blocks. These Mr D. J. Brown, who accompanied me on several occasions, and myself, considered to be an organism; and on showing one of them to Mr Charles Peach he undertook to make a section from it for microscopic examination. This he succeeded in doing in a very satisfactory manner, and submitted the section to Mr Robert Etheridge, jun., who determined it to be a coral of a very fine structure; and, in a

Remarks by the Vice-President, David Milne Home, LL.D., on delivering to Professor Heddle the Keith Prize

The Keith Prize for the biennial period 1875–77, which has been awarded to Professor HEDDLE, for his papers on the “Rhombohedral Carbonates,” and on the “Felspars of Scotland,” originally communicated to the Society, and containing important discoveries, was presented by the President (Professor Kelland) with the following remarks:—Professor Heddle,—I am here to-night to exemplify a remark which is often made, that to insure success in an address such as I am about to deliver, the best way is to commit the charge of it to one absolutely ignorant of the subject. No false pride will then stand in the way of the best sources of information, nor will any undue admixture of half knowledge clog and darken the truth. For every particular contained in these remarks, then, I at once unhesitatingly acknowledge myself indebted to Professor Geikie.

XXII.–A Brief Description of the Map of Shetland, issued with Vol. II of the Mineralogical Magazine

The accompanying map is the outcome of a survey of Shetland, conducted during part of several summers.Almost the whole of the junctions laid down were visited by myself ; for the few that were not, and also for certain of the lines continued inland—which from an almost unbroken covering of peat and turf, are more or less conjectural—I am indebted to Dr. Hibbert's narrative.To Professor Geikie's map of Scotland I am indebted for the southern limit of the isolated mass of sandstone of the Lerwick district.

The Keith Medal of the Royal Society of Edinburgh

ON the 3rd inst., at a meeting of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, the President, Professor Kelland, in presenting the Keith Medal which had been awarded by the Council to Professor Heddle, of St. Andrews, delivered the following address:—“Professor Heddle—I am here to-night to exemplify a remark which is often made, that to insure success in an address, such as I am about to deliver, the best way is to commit the charge of it to one absolutely ignorant of the subject. No false pride will then stand in the way of the best sources of information, nor will any undue admixture of half knowledge clog and darken the truth. For every particular contained in these remarks, then, I at once unhesitatingly acknowledge myself indebted to Professor Geikie. When I first became acquainted with this Society, forty years ago, there used to frequent our meetings men who had the reputation of being mineralogists rather than geologists—Lord Greenock, Allan, and perhaps Jameson himself. That race has now died out, and with them mineralogy, as a distinct science, has all but lain dormant amongst us. During the preceding quarter of a century that science had flourished nowhere more vigorously than in Edinburgh. Professor Jameson introduced the definiteness of system of the Freyberg School, and infused into his pupils such a love of minerals that numerous private cabinets were formed; while under his fostering care the University Museum grew into a large and admirable series. One of my first acts as Professor in the University was to vote out of the Reid Fund, which had just come into our hands, a large sum (some thousands) to pay back moneys expended on minerals throughout a series of years preceding. During these years, Geology, as the science is now understood, hardly existed. For, as the nature and importance of the organic remains embedded in rocks became recognised, their enormous value in the elucidation of geological problems gradually drew observers away from the study of minerals. Consequently, as Palæontology increased, Mineralogy waned among us. To such an extent was the study of minerals neglected, that geologists, even of high reputation, could not distinguish many ordinary varieties. But, as a knowledge of rocks presupposes an acquaintance more or less extensive with minerals, the neglect of mineralogy reacted most disadvantageously on that domain of geology which deals with the composition and structure of rocks. The nomenclature of the rocks of Britain sank into a state of confusion, from which it is now only beginning to recover. To you, Professor Heddle, belongs the merit of having almost alone upheld the mineralogical reputation of your native country during these long years of depression. You have devoted your life to the study, and have made more analyses of minerals than any other observer in Britain. You have not contented yourself with determining their composition and their names; you have gone into almost every parish in the more mountainous regions, have searched them out in their native localities, and, by this means, have studied their geological relations, treasuring up evidences from which to reason regarding their origin and history. After thirty years of continuous work, you have communicated the results of your labours to this Society. For the first two of these papers on the Rhombohedral Carbonates and on the Feldspars, in which you have greatly extended our knowledge of pseudomorphic change among minerals, enunciating a law of the shrinkage so frequently resulting therefrom, the Society proposes now to express its gratitude to you. The value of your papers is undoubted. Through the kindness of Mr. Milne Home, I have been favoured with the sight of letters addressed to you by four eminent mineralogists, Dana of America, Rammelsberg of Berlin, Szabo of Buda-Pesth, and King of Queen's College, Galway. Szabo states that the notice of your paper on the Feldspars, which appeared in Groth's Zeitschrift für Mineralogie, greatly interests him, and makes him desirous of placing himself in direct communication with the author. Dana says, ‘I have read your paper on the Feldspars, in the Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, with great satisfaction. Your thorough method of work leads towards important results of great geological, as well as mineralogical value.’

Obituary notice of Professor Nicol, Honorary Fellow

I regret to have to announce the death of another Honorary Fellow of our Society, Professor James Nicol, of Aberdeen, who was elected an Honorary Fellow so long ago as 26th February 1863. Although the geological world has not heard much of Professor Nicol for some years past, his name was at one time a familiar one in geological investigation and controversy. In 1850 he and Sir Roderick Murchison made a tour to Ayrshire to investigate the Silurian rocks there, Nicol having previously diligently studied those of the Lammermuirs. He had likewise ‶written some of the earliest descriptions of the Silurian rocks of Peeblesshire and the south of Scotland, as well as an excellent Guide to the Geology of Scotland. He had also been chosen by the Geological Society of London to be its assistant secretary″ (Professor Geikie’s ‶Memoir of Murchison,″ ii. 113). It was owing to the discovery by Nicol, among others, of Silurian fossils in the Scottish Lowlands that Murchison was enabled to extend his Silurian kingdom from St Abb’s Head to Port Patrick, just as the discovery of fossils in the Northern Highlands by our veteran associate, Charles W. Peach, enabled Sir Roderick to systematise the rocks there also. In 1855, we find Murchison and Nicol again geologising together. This time they went to Inverness and on to Dingwall, Assynt, and Applecross. Subsequently, Nicol traversed the same ground with Sir Henry James, afterwards Director of H.M.’s Ordnance Survey. At last, with the aid of Mr Peach, the

Presentation of the Neill Prize to Charles Wm. Peach

The Council having awarded the Neill Prize for the Triennial Period, 1871–74, to Mr Charles William Peach, for his contributions to Scottish Zoology and Geology, and for his recent contributions to Fossil Botany, Professor Geikie, on the presentation of the medal, addressed the President as follows:—Sir,—The Council of the Royal Society of Edinburgh has awarded the Neill Prize for the triennial period, 1871–74, to Mr Charles William Peach, and on the part of the Council I am requested to describe briefly to the Society on the present occasion the nature of his scientific work, which has been judged well deserving of one of the Society's medals.