1 844 THE CLIMATE OF BRITAIN 59 



The work was to be in three parts or volumes, 

 of which it was stipulated that the first should be 

 delivered complete by the ist January 1845, the 

 second by the ist October of the same year, and 

 the third by the ist October 1846. In fulfilment 

 of this undertaking Ramsay made numerous notes, 

 and wrote out many pages of manuscript, but the press 

 of official and other engagements, which became, both 

 with him and with his colleague, increasingly severe, 

 prevented the task from ever being completed. Looking 

 back upon this enterprise, we can hardly doubt that 

 Ramsay felt his practical acquaintance with English 

 geology to be as yet too limited to enable him to per- 

 form the task as he would have wished. It was only 

 three years since he had left Scotland, and those years, 

 actively spent in field-work as they were, had been 

 passed almost wholly in South Wales. He gained 

 eventually an unrivalled familiarity with English geo- 

 logy, but many years had still to elapse before that 

 qualification was acquired. 



Much is said and written in dispraise of the climate 

 of the British Isles, but the field-geologist can find 

 few regions on the face of the globe where he may ply 

 his vocation more continuously from season to season 

 than there. The winters over much of the United 

 Kingdom are seldom so severe as seriously to inter- 

 rupt out-of-door work for more than a week or two at 

 a time. The summers are not too warm to prevent 

 active exercise in the open air from early morning 

 until dusk, while the length of a summer's day in these 

 northern latitudes gives time for as much continuous 

 walking and climbing as the strongest frame can 

 endure. Even the rain, which is the geologist's chief 

 meteorological enemy, falls in such wise that the 



