1 8 PARENTAGE AND YOUTH CHAP, i 



Greenough, 1 Buckland, 2 Phillips, 3 Murchison, 4 De la 

 Beche, 5 Smith of Jordanhill, 6 Agassiz, r Strickland, 8 

 Edward Forbes, 9 and Griffith. 10 It was before this 

 audience that Ramsay read his first scientific paper, 

 ' Notes taken during the Surveys for the Construction 

 of the Geological Model, Maps, and Sections of the 

 Island of Arran.' n In this communication he gave a 

 brief sketch of his work. How he was guided in the 

 conception of it, and in the further elaboration of his 

 results, will appear from the following sentences in a 

 letter to him from Nichol : 'In writing out your 

 memoir never omit to draw attention as you go along 

 to points yet requiring elucidation, and which present 

 hopes of something very interesting. You must make 

 this memoir short, chiefly in the way of scientific notes. 



1 George Bellas Greenough, born 1778, died 1855; one of the founders 

 and the first President of the Geological Society of London. 



2 William Buckland, born 1784, died 1856; author of Rdiquia Diluviancz, 

 also of one of the most celebrated Bridgewater Treatises, and of numerous geological 

 memoirs ; Dean of Westminster, and Reader in Geology in the University of 

 Oxford. 



3 John Phillips, born 1800, died 1874 ; one of the founders and for many 

 years General Secretary of the British Association ; was for some years attached 

 to the Geological Survey under De la Beche ; an able writer and clear lecturer 

 on geology ; succeeded Dr. Buckland in the geological readership at Oxford. 



4 Roderick Impey Murchison, born 1792, died 1871 ; author of The Silurian 

 System, etc., and Director-General of the Geological Survey from 1855 to 1871. 



6 Henry Thomas De la Beche, born 1796, died 1855 ; founder and first 

 Director-General of the Geological Survey of Great Britain ; author of some 

 valuable papers and treatises. 



6 James Smith, born 1782, died 1867 ; author of a remarkable work on The 

 Voyage and Shipwreck of St. Paul, and some of the earliest papers on the shelly 

 deposits of the Glacial Drift. 



7 Louis Agassiz, born 1807, died 1873 > famous as a writer on fossil fishes, 

 and for his contributions to glacial geology. 



8 Hugh Edwin Strickland, born 1811, died 1853; a geologist of great 

 ability and promise ; killed by a passenger train when examining a cutting on the 

 Manchester, Sheffield, and Lincolnshire Railway. 



9 Edward Forbes, born 1815, died 1854; one of the foremost British 

 naturalists of his time ; attached to the Geological Survey, and shortly before 

 his early death appointed Professor of Natural History in the University of 

 Edinburgh. 



10 Richard Griffith, born 1784, died 1878; the most illustrious geologist 

 Ireland has produced. 



11 Report, Brit. Assoc. 1840, Sections, p. 92. 



