It was nearly the end of July before the MS. was finally completed, and the nature of the effort is indicated by the fact that the concluding sentences of the book were written in his sleep! He was working at it as usual till far into the night, and could not find a fitting sentence to round off the whole. After trying for some time ineffectively, he decided to leave the matter till the morning, and went off to bed, the time being 2 A.M. In his usual orderly fashion he had placed the last sheets on his writing-table, putting two books on top to prevent the papers from being scattered by a chance draught. In the morning he found them scattered over the table, to his great disgust, for it was a stern household regulation that papers were _taboo_ for all hands save their owner’s. The maid when taxed, however, denied indignantly that she had touched them, and when the injured author gathered up his treasures he was astonished to find, written in his own handwriting, though not with his usual neatness, the sentence which now stands as the final one. Evidently he had dropped to sleep and come down to complete the unfinished task in a subconscious condition. The story shows clearly that it was time the book was done with. But the labour did not cease with the completion of the MS. The holiday, which began early in August, was spent partly in London, looking up final references, and partly in South Wales, with a view to making out some further glacial points. A letter to Mr Horne suggests the mixed feelings which the completion of the task brought. He says:--“I am well pleased now to have the thing off my hands. I will not soon begin another such work. It is too much worry and labour--and yet pleasant withal.” Later he writes:--“Now that my book is off my hands, time in the evenings hangs heavy on my hands”--the Nemesis, a psychologist would say, of overwork, for it was obviously the condition when nothing but work had become possible! Various pleasant little incidents, however, occurred this autumn. Thus the French geologists, MM. Falsan and Chantre, sent him a copy of their Monograph on the old glaciers of the Rhone basin. In sending the book M. Falsan spoke with gratifying warmth of _The Great Ice Age_, and of the many new ideas which he and his confrère had obtained from its perusal. “I feel as if I shall get cocky,” says James Geikie in a letter, “and, as pride goes before a fall, am beginning to dread lest _Prehistoric Europe_ should be damned.” M. Falsan also asked permission to translate _The Great Ice Age_ into French, and there were German offers to translate both _The Great Ice Age_ and _Prehistoric Europe_.