SKETCH OF ANDREW C ROME IE RAMSAY. 265 



communicated his paper embodying these opinions at the meeting 

 of the Geological Society, in 1862, succeeding that in which he had 

 been elected its president. His views met with strong dissent from 

 the older geologists, while " most of the younger bloods," as he 

 called them, accepted them. 



The imperfection of the geological record, to which Darwin had 

 called attention, became more forcibly impressed on his mind. He 

 was struck by the extraordinary gaps in the succession of organic re- 

 mains, even when there was no marked physical interruption of the 

 continuity of sedimentation, and connected them with geographical 

 changes of which no other trace had survived. He had spoken on the 

 subject at the meeting of the American Association, and now made 

 " Breaks in the Succession of the British Strata " the subject of his 

 presidential addresses in 1863 and 1864. 



Another change in the organization of the Geological Survey 

 was made in 1867, when Scotland was constituted a distinct branch, 

 and Professor Ramsay's title became Senior Director for England 

 and Wales. Sir Roderick Murchison died in October, 18Y1, and 

 after a few months' delay for the consideration of various other 

 questions. Professor Ramsay was appointed Director General of the 

 Geological Survey, being, " after thirty-one years of service, placed 

 officially at the head of the organization of which he had so long been 

 the life and soul." The reward came to him, however, " too late 

 to enable him to profit by it as he would have done had it been con- 

 ferred ten or fifteen years sooner." One of his excursions abroad re- 

 sulted in a paper on the Physical History of the Valley of the Rhine, 

 and a discourse to the Royal Institution on the same subject. He 

 resigned his lectureship, " which in these last years of failing power 

 had become an increasing burden," in June, 1876. He was made 

 president of the Swansea meeting of the British Association, in 1880, 

 and presented an address embodying a general summary of all the 

 geological branches in which he had worked. At the jubilee meet- 

 ing the next year, in York, as the oldest surviving president of Section 

 G, he was made its president again, and delivered the address, princi- 

 pally dealing with the progress of geology for the past fifty years, 

 with much difficulty. Later in the fall he was knighted, and on the 

 last day of 1881 he retired from the public service. 



During the last ten years of his official life Sir Andrew Ramsay 

 gave much attention to the physical history of river valleys, con- 

 cerning which he sought to trace the cause of the flow of the rivers 

 of a district in the ancient topography of the region, and published 

 special papers on the valleys of the Rhine and the Dee. He was 

 a thorough uniformitarian in geology. 



It is not by the visible amount of published work — Sir Archibald 



