CHAPTER IX 



THE PRESIDENCY OF THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY RE 



ORGANISATION OF THE GEOLOGICAL SURVEY. 



THE period of Ramsay s life on the history of which 

 we now enter embraces a space of about ten years. 

 During that interval he was mainly occupied in the 

 duties of the Geological Survey, finding time and 

 ability for fewer extra-official labours than he had 

 been able to accomplish before. His routine work 

 was not relieved and enlivened by the inspiration of 

 Swiss mountaineering ; but he continued to perform 

 it with faithful persistence, and to superintend his 

 staff with the same firm and friendly hand. 



It is one of the duties of the President of the 

 Geological Society at the end of each of the two 

 years of his tenure of the office to read an address, 

 which may either deal with the general progress of 

 geology during the previous twelve months, or may 

 treat of some special branch of the subject to which 

 the writer has particularly given his attention. For 

 some years past Ramsay had been brooding upon 

 what Darwin had so well enforced the imperfection 

 of the geological record. He was struck by the 

 extraordinary gaps in the succession of organic re 

 mains, even where there was no marked physical 

 interruption of the continuity of sedimentation. And 



