CHAPTER VII 



THE GEOLOGICAL SURVEY IN SCOTLAND 



THE general awakening of the country, after the Great 

 Exhibition of 1851, to the national importance of cul- 

 tivating science for industrial if not for theoretical 

 purposes, showed itself in Scotland, among other ways, 

 in an agitation for the extension of the Geological 

 Survey to that part of the United Kingdom. The 

 movement never needed to be vigorously pushed, for 

 the mapping of Scotland had from the beginning been 

 contemplated as part of the duty of the Geological 

 Survey of Great Britain. But two serious impedi- 

 ments had hitherto stood in the way of even making 

 a commencement of the work. In the first place, the 

 Ordnance Survey of Scotland was so far behind that the 

 maps, on which alone a geological investigation could 

 be properly based, had not been available ; and in the 

 second place, even if maps could have been obtained, 

 the staff of the Geological Survey was so small that 

 it was hardly possible to spare any officers for break- 

 ing ground in Scotland. In response to the agitation 

 on the subject, De la Beche instructed Ramsay to go 

 to Scotland and see for himself the actual state of 

 affairs. Writing to his lieutenant on the 26th July 1853, 

 he said : ' The Survey (Geological) of Scotland has 

 been long ordered (vide votes in Parliament), but we 



