CHAPTER IV 



THE PROFESSORSHIP OF GEOLOGY AT UNIVERSITY 

 COLLEGE, LONDON 



THE year 1847 was to be a memorable one in the life 

 of the subject of this biography. The early months 

 of the year were passed in the usual official and social 

 engagements, into all of which Ramsay entered with 

 much zest. Perhaps the most important event in his 

 London life during the season was his introduction 

 to the general scientific society of London on the i2th 

 March, when he gave the Friday evening discourse 

 at the Royal Institution referred to in the foregoing 

 chapter. He chose as his subject one which his 

 Survey work in Wales had now made familiar to 

 him, and on which he had much fresh information to 

 convey 'The Causes and Amount of Geological 

 Denudations.' In later years he not infrequently dis- 

 coursed in the same theatre, and usually with some 

 trepidation beforehand. The success of his lecture 

 always depended upon the mood he happened to be 

 in at the time, and he never could tell how he was 

 succeeding until his task was half done. ' The 

 Royal Institution,' he once wrote to me, 'is the most 

 ticklish audience in Britain to lecture before, because 

 the most critical and refined, and possessing also, in 

 large and equal shares, so much knowledge and so 



