SUMMARY OF RAMSAY^S SCIENTIFIC WORK 355 



This memoir would be incomplete if it did not 

 give some retrospect and summary of the work 

 achieved in the lifetime which it has attempted to 

 describe. It is too soon yet properly to appraise the 

 ultimate value of this work in the general progress of 

 science. But we may at least group Sir Andrew 

 Ramsay s labours in the several categories under 

 which they may be classified in order to form some 

 conception of the general character and sum of his 

 contributions to the geology of his time. 



I. The department of Structural Geology comprises 

 his earliest and his latest labours, beginning with his 

 little pamphlet on Arran, and ending with the volumin 

 ous second edition of the monograph on North Wales. 

 Between these two limits he accomplished a large 

 amount of investigation directed towards the eluci 

 dation of the geological structure of Britain. In 

 England his own share of this labour was for the most 

 part merged in that of his colleagues. For, in his 

 eagerness for the repute of the Survey as a body, he 

 was careless of his individual fame. Undoubtedly his 

 own greatest achievement is his mapping in North 

 Wales, and more particularly the working out of the 

 structure of the complicated and mountainous ground 

 around Snowdon. It must be remembered by those 

 who now examine the geology of that region that 

 when Ramsay surveyed it the science of petrography 

 hardly existed at all in England. He had no assist 

 ance from the microscope, and scarcely any from the 

 chemical laboratory. He had to determine his rocks 

 with no more help than could be given by a pocket- 

 lens, and he was guided in this matter largely by the 

 behaviour of the masses in the field. It should not. 

 therefore, be matter for surprise that a geologist of 



