One motive for the long holiday rambles seems to have been butterfly-collecting, if one may judge from the enthusiasm with which in later years, when himself the father of growing boys, he entered into the pursuit for their sakes. Some of his letters written to his sons during his travels on the Continent and in America are thoroughly boy-like in their enthusiasm for the beautiful creatures, and in their descriptions of the efforts necessary to obtain perfect specimens. But like many an Edinburgh boy before and since, he was keenly interested in fossils and in the rocks and minerals represented in the neighbourhood of his native town. Fossil-hunting expeditions to the famous limestone quarries of Burdiehouse and Gilmerton, and to the coprolitic shales down on the shore at Wardie, were often undertaken in company with two future colleagues on the Geological Survey--his eldest brother Archibald, later Director of the Geological Survey, and now Sir Archibald Geikie, and the boy who afterwards became Prof. John Young of Glasgow. James was considerably younger than either, and, as he himself indicates in a Memoir prefixed to Dr Young’s _Essays and Addresses_ (1904), was only allowed to accompany his seniors occasionally and as a special favour. Indeed, throughout all this early period it seems clear that “Jamie” was only a little boy, not of great account in a family whose hopes were concentrated on the eldest son. The latter seems to have settled his own career early, for it is recorded that one day while walking up the South Bridge with his little brother, he said:--“Do you see that big building with the iron gates? I am going in there, and one day I shall be a professor there.” The little brother’s feelings at the time are not recorded, but it seems probable that no one in the family contemplated that the great iron gates would open for him also as a professor. With two older brothers, and two more following after, it is not to be wondered at that James Geikie’s school-days soon ended. In 1853 he left the High School, and at the beginning of 1854 was apprenticed to Mr Thomas Constable, the printer. His life here does not seem to have been happy. The confinement and long hours did not suit his health, the occupation did not appeal to his tastes, and among his chief consolations seem to have been occasional geologising holidays and books. These he read on his way to and from his work, for the family by this time lived on the other side of what, despite the past tense of the MS. quoted on p. 6, is still called The Meadows, and this open space had to be crossed daily.