SKETCH OF ANDREW CROMBIE RAMSAY. 261 



the Geological Society of the results that had been obtained among 

 strata so obscured by change, as " among the very highest triumphs 

 of geological field work," and mentioned Mr. Ramsay as particularly 

 cited by the director among the laborers who had obtained them. 

 When in 1845 the survey was transferred to another department, 

 and enlarged by the inclusion of Ireland, Mr. Ramsay was made 

 local director for Great Britain, with a salary of £300. He was to 

 have immediate supervision of the field work of the staff, to see 

 that the mapping was all conducted on uniform methods, to confer 

 with the officers on their difficulties, to bring the experience gained 

 in one district to bear upon the elucidation of another, so as to insure 

 harmony and steady progress in the field work, and the supervision 

 of certain matters of indoor w^ork. To a book of memoirs prepared 

 by the members of the survey at this time, Ramsay contributed a 

 paper on the Denudation of South Wales and the Adjacent Counties 

 of England, which is characterized by his biographer as having been 

 the first attempt to reduce the phenomena of denudation to actual 

 measurement by constructing horizontal sections on a true scale, and 

 showing what thickness of rock had actually been stripped off the 

 face of the country. Some expressions in it led to a correspondence 

 with Darwin and Lyell respecting the relative force of disturbance 

 in geological and recent times. In March, 1847, he delivered his first 

 lecture before the Royal Institution, on The Causes and Amount of 

 Geological Denudations. In June of the same year he accepted the 

 professorship of geology in University College, London, on terms by 

 which it was arranged that his duties there should not conflict with 

 those on the Geological Survey. 



Two papers read before the Geological Society in April, 1848, 

 one of which was by Professor Ramsay and W. T. Aveling, are 

 interesting in the history of British geology, inasmuch as they gave 

 the first published outline of the results up to that time obtained by 

 the Geological Survey in North Wales. Although they were mere 

 sketches and printed only in abstract, the director general, Sir Henry 

 de la Beche, was apprehensive as to the consequences of their appear- 

 ance before they came out through an official channel. He held 

 that the results described were obtained by public servants at the 

 cost of the state, and were the property of the country, and not of the 

 individuals who made them. Some of the staff chafed under the re- 

 straint, and it was Professor Ramsay's privilege to effect an arrange- 

 ment with the director general under which papers might be read 

 at the society after having been submitted to and approved by him. 

 Professor Ramsay thought this was a great point gained, for the 

 survey was " not half enough before the public." 



Professor Ramsay had held a very poor opinion of the glacial 



