In Ayrshire he had for colleagues Sir Archibald Geikie and Dr Peach; one of these was ultimately to select volcanic geology as his province, while the other attained great eminence as a palæontologist. Already James Geikie was absorbed in glacial geology; and each of the trio of geologists, though doing ostensibly the same work, had already chosen the special line of investigation in which he was ultimately to become a master. He had a great affection, too, for the warm-hearted, hospitable people of the west of Scotland, and in “braid Scots” used to relate many humorous episodes in which the sturdy farmers and “sma’ lairds” displayed their pawky humour. No full or adequate account of the work he did in Ayrshire in these years has ever been published. The short descriptions of sheets 22, 23, and 19, published by the Geological Survey, were in large part written by James Geikie, but, owing to the necessities of official publication entailing great brevity, they contain merely an outline of his main conclusions. The geologists who revised that ground forty years after the original survey are unanimous in regretting that more adequate description of the evidence which James Geikie had collected was not placed before the public. After leaving Ayrshire he was transferred to Kelso, and subsequently to the district ranging from Perth to Dunkeld. From a geological point of view this ground was considerably less varied; but as his note-books show, he was by this time deeply absorbed in glacial and Pleistocene geology, and every scrap of information regarding the latest stages in the physical history of Scotland was most carefully recorded and its importance weighed. Many of the conclusions he had already arrived at in Ayrshire were confirmed by fresh evidence in these years. And the estuary of the Tay, with its rich succession of late-glacial and post-glacial accumulations, became of great importance in his interpretation of the “glacial succession,” a subject to which the remainder of his life was devoted more than to any other.