During 1904 Prof. Geikie began to suffer from an affection of the knee which troubled him for some years, and proved to be a form of rheumatism. In October he writes to his son telling him of the progress of his new book, which was published the next year as _Structural and Field Geology for Students_, and in a few years’ time ran into a second edition. With his usual optimism he hoped to have it out early in the New Year, if not before, but by the following April he was still busy with proofs, and publication did not occur till June. Writing in April he says:--“The last sheet of my book will be off to the printer to-morrow, and the book itself will, I hope, appear before the end of the month. I shall feel like a fish out of water with no scribbling on hand. Nothing like it for filling up vacant hours.” When writing this letter he was on the eve of starting off for a visit to Ayr, in the hope that a course of bicycling would “supple” the leg. In this, however, he was disappointed, and in summer he and Mrs Geikie went to Wildbad in Würtemberg, where he hoped to find a cure. The baths, temporarily at least, did him much good, but his fellow-patients, mostly of German nationality, did not please him, and his letters are full of humorous complaints in regard to them. He was keenly interested also in the nature of the water, being convinced that its curative properties were not due to the constituents apparent on analysis but to some of the rarer elements, such as radium, present though undetected. The suggestion has been made and confirmed in regard to other waters since, but his keenness on the problem is of interest as showing that there was no failure of mental power. His letters to his doctor son on the physiological effects of the waters are full of his old _verve_ and clearness of exposition. Characteristically, however, he breaks off the scientific discussion to speak of the “fat Fraus and Herren,” whom he and his wife daily watch “as they slowly waddle and roll to and fro” near the Trinkhalle. His impressions he sums up in the following verses:-- The typical Frau, to my British mind, Is preposterous in front and prodigious behind: Her digestion is sound--for, ’tis very clear, Her grub she dissolves in an ocean of beer. Her lord, who is equally round and obese, Rolls along by her side, with a grunt and a wheeze-- Rolls along, did I say?--they do not roll far, But rotate within reasonable reach of a bar. With perhaps some recollection of his early studies of Heine, he takes eye measurements of the average German lady, and winds up with a vivid description of an ordinary German’s meal, and a disgusted--“But the most of these people are gross eaters.”