The mode of study took a direction which had some influence on James Geikie’s future, and is of interest on this account. The first impetus to the study of the language came apparently from Dr Young, who was very friendly with Dr Schmitz, the Rector of the High School, whose daughter he married at a later date. Young had apparently a good knowledge of the language, and he, early in their association, urged upon Mr Peach the necessity of acquiring at least a reading acquaintance with it, and recommended the learning of German poetry as a capital means of obtaining a vocabulary. By the spring of 1864 Mr Peach had already a considerable repertory, and his recitals roused in James Geikie his old passion for verse-making. The songs were first put into rough English, with many jokes about their sentimentality, and then James Geikie turned the rough translations into English verse. This was the beginning of a pastime which he carried on during a large part of his life. A selection of the verses was published in 1887 as _Songs and Lyrics by Heinrich Heine and other German Poets_. In the preface the author says that all the renderings there given were done “for his own amusement in those ‘brave days of youth,’ when difficulties and impossibilities are hardly recognised.” Many of the verses were published practically unaltered after more than twenty years’ interval, for most of them were made in very early days. They occur in letters, in note-books, diaries, and in various other places among his papers of the later sixties, and were evidently a true labour of love.