Abstract
ANOTHER of the links connecting us with the early days of geology has been severed by the death of the Professor of Natural History in the University of Aberdeen. For some years past Prof. Nicol's failing health prevented him from undertaking more work than his college duties required, so that he had somewhat fallen behind the crowd of younger aspirants to scientific reputation. It is a pleasant duty to recall his early services to geology. As far back as the year 1843 we find him contributing to the series of prize essays of the Highland Society a memoir on the geology of his native county, Peebleshire. Devoting himself with energy to the prosecution of his favourite pursuits, he prepared a useful little Guide to the Geology of Scotland, illustrated with maps and sections, and giving, from his own observations and the researches of previous writers, a compendious account of Scottish geognosy, so far as then known. Many years afterwards he published another compilation of Scottish geology in the form of a Geological Map of that country. He specially took up the mineralogical and petrographical department of geology, and showed his capacity for these subjects by publishing a text-book of mineralogy, which has kept its place as a work of reference. Appointed Assistant Secretary of the Geological Society, he in that capacity edited the Society's Journal, and had an opportunity of coming personally in contact with the foremost geologists of his time. Among those whose friendship he formed, one of the kindest and most serviceable was Murchison. Through the assistance of that active and powerful friend Nicol was appointed to the Chair of Geology at Cork, and a few years afterwards to the more lucrative post at Aberdeen, which he resigned only last year. During these years of official work he found time for a number of original papers chiefly on the geology of different parts of Scotland. Thus he returned once more to the study of the rocks of his own Tweed Valley to which he had been the first definitely to apply the term silurian. In company with his friend and benefactor Murchison, he extended these observations into Ayrshire and the west of Scotland. With the same companion he visited the north-west of Scotland, and after a long journey through these regions produced an independent memoir, in which he suggested that much of the metamorphic rocks of the north-west Highlands consisted of altered Carboniferous formations. When the fossils found in the Assynt limestones proved to be unquestionably Lower Silurian he was of course compelled to retract his published suggestion. He then adopted a completely opposite view and endeavoured to prove that the rocks which he had thought might be altered Carboniferous were really the most ancient or fundamental masses of the west coast brought up everywhere to the surface again by a vast dislocation and inversion. In this view, no less than in that for which it was substituted, he was opposed by Murchison, who proved by many sections that the rocks in question really lay upon the fossiliferous limestones and could not therefore be older than the Lower Silurian period From the tame of this dispute the late professor devoted himself chiefly to his duties at Mareschal Col. We where hls capacity for business made him a most useful colleague From summer to summer, however, he could resume the hammer and renew his acquaintance with old haunts or make himself familiar with new ones. In these excursions he was sometimes accompanied by an old geological friend to whom he could communicate the views he no longer cared to publish. With a kindly nature he united a certain timidity which made him shrink from publicity and led to his being less widely known than his personal qualities deserved that he should be.
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James Nicol, F.R.S.E., F.G.S . Nature 19, 590 (1879). https://doi.org/10.1038/019590a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/019590a0