1878-1880 LOSES THE LEFT EYE 345 



intervals of leisure for several years past, was at length 

 published in May of this year. 



For some time previous to that at which this 

 narrative has now arrived, Ramsay had suffered much 

 trouble from an affection of the left eye, brought on 

 in the first instance by overwork in lamplight, and 

 aggravated by a severe wetting at the funeral of a 

 brother-in-law. In the autumn of 1878 the ailment 

 became so serious that, to save the other eye, it 

 was necessary to remove the left one an operation 

 skilfully performed by his friend Mr. Whitaker Hulke, 

 and borne by Ramsay with his characteristic quiet 

 courage. 



A month later he wrote to his friends at Dolau- 

 cothi : I am well enough to be doing much as usual, 

 excepting that I do less work as yet. Then I have 

 got a most lovely glass eye. You are not to quote 

 Shakespeare, &quot; Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy 

 politician, seem to see the things thou dost not.&quot; 



On the 1 6th June 1879 he received a gratifying 

 telegram from Sella at Rome, that he had been elected 

 a corresponding member of the Royal Academy of the 

 Lincei, an honour which he specially prized, not only 

 because of the famous Society which conferred it on 

 him, but because it came as a mark of the kindly 

 esteem of his friend, the illustrious statesman and 

 geologist of Italy. 



In the early summer of 1880 he succeeded in 

 taking a brief holiday in a part of Europe which he 

 had not before explored. Mrs. Ramsay and his 

 second daughter had spent the winter at Hyeres, 

 and he met them on their way home at Aix les Bains. 

 The traces left by the vast ancient glacier of the 

 Rhone, which once overspread all that region, filled 



