1852 EARLY WORK IN GLACIAL GEOLOGY 203 



tion. Your observations on the drift on the flanks of 

 Carnedd Llewelyn and Carnedd Dafydd are exceed- 

 ingly interesting, and indeed the whole article is one 

 calculated greatly to advance the question.' There 

 can be little doubt that this first trip to Switzerland 

 finally fixed the bent of Ramsay's mind in all his later 

 geological work. Though still busy with the many 

 problems presented by the structure of the older rocks, 

 these no longer absorbed his attention, nor exercised 

 that fascination which they had hitherto done. He 

 now threw himself more and more into the study of 

 the origin of the superficial contours of the land, and 

 among the various agents by which these contours 

 had been moulded and modified, he specially devoted 

 himself to the investigation of the work of ice. 

 Though the bold generalisations of Agassiz in regard 

 to the former glaciation of Britain had been published 

 twelve years before, they had met with but small 

 acceptance among the geologists of Britain. J. D. 

 Forbes, Buckland, Darwin, Charles Maclaren, and 

 Robert Chambers had indeed traced the relics of 

 vanished glaciers in various mountain groups of Scot- 

 land, the Lake District, and Wales. But a broader 

 treatment of the subject was needed, and among those 

 who led the way to this more comprehensive investi- 

 gation, and who made the Glacial Period one of the 

 most absorbingly interesting of all the geological ages, 

 a foremost place must always be assigned to Sir 

 Andrew Ramsay. 



In the course of preparing for the engraver the 

 various sheets of the map of North Wales, and the Hori- 

 zontal Sections across the same region, a number of 

 difficulties presented themselves. In an area of some 

 complication, and where the survey had been the 



