SOME NEW BOOKS 



Andrew Crombie Ramsay. 



Memoir of Sir Andrew Crombie Ramsay. By Sir Archibald Geikie. 8vo. 

 Pp. xii., 397, with Opiates. London : Macmillan & Co., 1895. Price 12s. 6d. 

 nett. 



This biography of the late Director of the Geological Survey of 

 Great Britain and Ireland, by the distinguished pen of his successor 

 in the office, will not disappoint the geologists who have eagerly 

 awaited it. To all interested in the noble science of geology, and 

 especially to those concerned with British geology, the book will 

 prove first of all a treat to read, and then a valuable, indeed an 

 indispensable, work to place on their shelves for future reference. 

 Our own circle of readers need not be reminded of the scientific 

 labours of Ramsay, his detailed and masterly field-work — chiefly in 

 Wales, his philosophical studies in the stratigraphy of our islands, 

 his restoration of vanished geographies, and his far-reaching theories 

 of denudation by rain, rivers, and above all by ice. Many indeed 

 who know nothing further of geology have read with profound interest 

 his charming volume on the Physical Geology and Geography of Great 

 Britain. But his work as a geologist was far more than ever met the 

 public eye, work in the field, in the office, and in the lecture-room ; 

 and the man himself was greater than his work. 



But the volume before us does not give merely the details of 

 Ramsay's own life and a sketch of his labours as a geologist ; it is 

 a storehouse of information for all who desire to learn something of 

 that great institution, the Geological Survey, and the establishments 

 now or formerly connected therewith, namely, the Museum of Practical 

 Geology and the School of Mines. Among the many figures that are 

 brought vividly before us in these pages, next to Ramsay himself, 

 none stands out more prominently or more lovably than the gifted 

 man who was the instigator, the founder, and the first head of these 

 institutions, Sir Henry Thomas De la Beche, the Father of British 

 Official Geology. It was harder work then than it is now, to fight 

 against an economical Government and " the eternal ' No ' of the 

 Treasury " ; harder work, too, to enforce the claims of the investigation 

 of earth-structure and earth-history, in days when " earth " and 

 " dirt " were hardly discriminated, and when polite society regarded 

 the geologist in much the same light as the collier or the quarryman. 

 In enthusiastic and humorous sentences, Sir Archibald sketches the 

 life of a " Royal Hammerer." Many are the curious characters for 

 which the itinerant geologist is mistaken, sometimes by an ignorant 

 peasantry, sometimes, with direr consequences, by gamekeepers and 

 policemen. The funniest story is that told of " one of the staff who, 

 poking about to see the rocks exposed on the outskirts of a village in 

 Cumberland, was greeted by an old woman as the ' sanitary 'spector.' 

 He modestly disclaimed the honour, but noticing that the place was 



