1814-1840 HIS FIRST PUBLICATION 21 



and with her maternal desire to keep all the family 

 around her if that might be, she gladly welcomed any 

 proposal that would prevent such a breaking up of 

 her home-circle. As one disappointment succeeded 

 another in his efforts to obtain a solid footing in 

 business, he employed himself in completing his 

 account of Arran. The ' speculation ' referred to by 

 Nichol took formal shape in an agreement between 

 the Glasgow publishing firm of Richard Griffin and Co., 

 and Andrew Ramsay, ' Merchant in Glasgow,' dated 

 2nd November 1840, by which, in consideration of the 

 payment of a sum of twenty-one pounds, the latter 

 undertook to prepare within three months a work on 

 the geology of the island of Arran, together with the 

 necessary views, sections, and maps. 



In pursuance of this agreement, the work was duly 

 written, and appeared the following spring as a thin 

 octavo volume of seventy-eight pages, with a little map, 

 a page of sections, and upwards of two dozen wood- 

 cuts, chiefly from drawings by the author. It was 

 entitled The Geology of the Island of Arran from 

 Original Survey, by Andrew Crombie Ramsay, and was 

 appropriately dedicated to Nichol. This essay has long 

 since taken its place among the classics of Scottish 

 geology. As a broad outline of the structure of an 

 exceedingly interesting geological region it was a most 

 meritorious production. It gave sufficient detail to 

 show how carefully its author had gone over the 

 ground, how accurate and acute he was as an observer, 

 and how clearly he saw the relation between scattered or 

 isolated facts and the broad principles that connected 

 them. While his chapters did not by any means 

 exhaust Arran, they correctly described its general 

 geological structure. In particular, the existence of 



