Page:Proceedings of the Royal Society of London Vol 7.djvu/295

 Encyclopædia Britannica, and to the Transactions of the Wernerian Society, of which he was the founder. In 1819, in conjunction with Dr., now Sir David Brewster, he commenced the Edinburgh Philosophical Journal, which was afterwards continued, under his sole editorship, under the title of the Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal, and this duty he continued steadfastly to perform to the end of his life.

Mr. Jameson's strong point was Mineralogy; and as he held a knowledge of minerals to be valuable chiefly as subservient to practical geology and mining, he paid less regard to chemical than to external characters in the definition and determination of mineral species. His consummate acquaintance with the mineral characters of rocks stood him in good stead in the great controversy of which Edinburgh became the centre, between the respective supporters of the Plutonian and Neptunian theories of the earth. Trained in the school of Werner, and deeply reverencing his great master, Mr. Jameson naturally imbibed his views; and though he eventually became convinced of their insufficiency, and candidly avowed his change of opinion, it is admitted that the doctrine which finally triumphed gained much in solidity and precision by the searching ordeal to which it had been subjected at the hands of its accomplished opponent.

His College lectures owed no attraction to language or delivery, but the solid instruction imparted secured the earnest attention of his audience. His success as a teacher, however, was greatly due to his field lectures and geological excursions with his pupils in the country round Edinburgh, so rich in visible illustrations of geological science. These practical outdoor instructions, conveyed as they were in perspicuous and impressive language, and followed up by easy and unrestrained colloquial explanation, became the means of infusing a love for the study in many of his youthful followers, and of sending forth active and well-prepared geological labourers to most parts of the world.

Mr. Jameson was a member of many learned societies both at home and abroad; he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1826. In private life he was much esteemed and could reckon many attached friends. His death took place on the 19th of April 1854.