26o POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



in Glasgow boarded in liis mother's house, and accompanied the 

 '^ father of modern geology " in some of his excursions. In the 

 successive tours and excursions he took he went over ground which 

 had been partly explored by the earlier geologists and of the struc- 

 ture of which they had published accounts that could not, however, 

 " be regarded as more than outlines of a whole subject, which would 

 require years of patient research before its details could be mastered." 

 He had not intended to criticise their work or to publish his observa- 

 tions, which he made for his own gratification, but " gradually he 

 found that various facts met with by him in the course of his rambles 

 had not been noticed by others before him." He spoke of them to 

 Professor Mchol, who, looking forward to the meeting of the Brit- 

 ish Association in Glasgow in 1840, was preparing a geological model 

 of the island of Arran. He made Ramsay secretary of the local 

 subcommittee of which he was convener, and in reporting the success 

 of his work gave his young friend the whole credit for it. Before this 

 meeting Eamsay read his first scientific paper, which was a descrip- 

 tion of the work he had been drawn into, at the session held 

 on the eve of an excursion which the geologists of the association 

 took to Arran. Toward the end of this year he published a small 

 book, with a map and illustrations — The Geology of the Island of 

 Arran from Original Suiwey — which " has long since taken its place 

 among the classics of Scottish geology." 



Murchison, having met Ramsay at the British Association, had 

 formed a high opinion of his geological capacity, and now, while the 

 young man was preparing his book for the printer, invited him to 

 accompany him on a geological excursion to Russia. The invitation 

 was a welcome surprise to Ramsay, and he proceeded at once to take 

 advantage of it. When he reached London, in March, 1841, he was 

 informed that Murchison had given up taking him to Russia, but had 

 procured him a place as assistant geologist to De la Beche, who was 

 making the Ordnance Geological Survey for the Government. He 

 was appointed on a salary of nine shillings a day, excluding Sundays, 

 and, proceeding to his post, arrived at Tenby, "Wales, April 2d, "there 

 to begin a career in the Geological Survey which was to last until 

 he had risen to be the head of the service, and one of the foremost 

 geologists of his day." The field work of the survey had been a 

 year or two in progress in South Wales when Ramsay joined it, and 

 there were then four assistants on the staff besides him; with, in 

 addition, Prof. John Phillips as paleontologist. 



The geological structure of the region in which he labored proved 

 to be excessively complicated. " It had been only cursorily exam- 

 ined by previous observers," and " its real difficulties remained to be 

 discovered and grappled with." Two years later Murchison spoke to 



