Professor James Geikie supplies me with the following record of his experience when he was on the staff of the Survey: ‘One warm summer day I was laboriously forcing my way up a narrow ravine or “cleugh” in the hills south of Colmonel, in Ayrshire. The geology being somewhat complicated, it was necessary to use my hammer at almost every step, and for this purpose I had to keep the bed of the burn where the rocks were best seen. The cleugh was not only narrow and steep, but choked in places with blackthorn, so that progress was both slow and painful. Being far from the madding crowd, there was no reason why, under a broiling sun, I should affect a philosophical coolness which I was far from feeling, and it is probable, therefore, that from time to time I may have sought relief by addressing the obnoxious thorns in vehement language. At the head of the cleugh I came upon a tall farmer-looking man, who told me he had been watching my movements, and wondering who and what I was. When he heard I was trying to find out how the world was made, he expressed no astonishment, but showed keen interest as I pointed out the evidence of glacial work--striated rocks, morainic debris, and large erratics--all of which happened to be well displayed on the hillside where we stood. As he seemed really anxious to know the meaning of the evidence, I explained it as well as I could, and then we parted. A few weeks afterwards I was dining with an old friend--the late Mr. Cathcart of Knockdolian--who told me he was quite sure I must have been recently in his neighbourhood. “Only yesterday,” he said, “I met the old farmer of G----,” who had a strange tale to tell me. “Dod! Mr. Caithcart,” he began, “I ran across the queerest body the ither day. As I was comin’ by the head o’ the cleugh I thocht I heard a wheen tinkers quarrellin’, but whan I lookit doon there was jist ae wee stoot man. Whiles he was chappin’ the rocks wi’ a hammer: whiles he was writin’ in a book, whiles fechtin’ wi’ the thorns, and miscain’ them for a’ that was bad. When he cam up frae the burn, him and me had a long confab. Dod! he tell’t me a’ aboot the stanes, and hoo they showed that Scotland was ance like Greenland, smoored in ice. A vary enterteenin’ body, Mr. Caithcart, but--an awfu’ leear.”’ Among my own geological experiences in Scotland I may mention that on one of my excursions, when, with a large party of my students, I was passing along the sea-front of a fishing village in Fife, I heard a stalwart matron ask her gossip at the next door, ‘Whae’s aucht them?’--that is, who owns them, or has charge of them? She evidently believed the company to be lunatic patients, but could not see any one among their number who seemed to her sane enough to be probably their keeper.