1814-1840 EARLY INFLUENCES 13 



rock. All over the island, crags and rugged knolls 

 reveal the nature of what lies beneath the surface, 

 while the peaks and crests of the northern mountain 

 group form the background of the finest landscapes. 

 Nowhere can the influence of geological structure 

 upon scenery be more clearly seen, and nowhere is 

 that influence displayed in forms that more em- 

 phatically appeal to the imagination. It is a region 

 where a slumbering love of geological inquiry can 

 hardly fail to be stimulated into activity, and where 

 a latent aptitude for such inquiry may easily be 

 quickened into life. 



Such were the surroundings amid which Ramsay 

 spent the holidays of his boyhood and youth. I have 

 not been able to trace definitely the beginning and 

 earliest development of his enthusiasm for geology. 

 There can be little doubt, however, that, over and 

 above the effect of his environment, he owed much of 

 the impulse which led him into the geological field to 

 the influence of two early friends. When still a boy 

 at Saltcoats, he had come into close contact with 

 David Landsborough, with whom he then began a 

 life-long friendship. This genial man and enthusiastic 

 naturalist, born in 1779, became in 1811 minister of 

 the parish of Stevenston, in which part of the village 

 of Saltcoats lies. He had from an early period of his 

 life devoted himself to the study of the botany and 

 natural history, not only of his own parish, but of the 

 neighbouring region of Ayrshire and of Arran. So 

 ardent was his devotion to these pursuits, and so 

 successful his cultivation of them, that he was known 

 as the Gilbert White of the west of Scotland. He is 

 said to have added nearly seventy species to the pre- 

 viously known flora and fauna of Scotland. His 



