1 847 FIELD - WORK IN WALES 99 



much ignorance.' We shall find in the course of this 

 biography that the impression made by the young 

 lecturer's exposition upon the present occasion had 

 its influence in securing for him the goodwill of the 

 authorities at University College. 



By the beginning of April he had finished all the 

 indoor work of the winter, and was ready to take the 

 field. From that time, with the exception of the brief 

 interval required to attend the meeting of the British 

 Association at Oxford, where he acted as Secretary of 

 Section C, he remained all the summer and autumn 

 in the field. 



A few weeks of inspection duty were first spent 

 with H. W. Bristow among the Jurassic rocks of 

 Dorsetshire, and a visit was paid to Aveline and his 

 family near Wrington, in Somerset. By the first week 

 in May he was once more back in Wales, running 

 boundary-lines that still needed completion to the 

 north of Brecon, and revising the volcanic geology 

 to the north of Builth. His growing experience of 

 ancient volcanic rocks now enabled him to separate 

 the * ashes ' from the ordinary sediments, which in the 

 earlier surveys had been grouped together, and to 

 introduce much more precision and detail into the 

 mapping of these rocks. W. W. Smyth, who had 

 previously mapped part of the district, joined him at 

 Builth, and the two colleagues re-examined the dis- 

 trict together. On the 2ist May Ramsay chronicles: 

 * Out with Smyth over the Carneddau, and on the 

 traps farther north. Found them so egregiously 

 wrong, that they will not stand an hour's investiga- 

 tion in the new style of mapping. Great part of 

 the work to-day was revising his old work, so that 

 we are all more or less in the same mess. The day 



