i854 THE SURVEY OF SCOTLAND BEGUN 219 



University of Edinburgh, was President of the 

 Geological section. Ramsay came to the meeting to 

 support his friend and read two papers. In one of 

 these he made known the startling conclusion to which 

 he had come, that in Permian time glaciers existed in 

 this country, and had left behind them the remarkable 

 breccias and boulder-beds of the Malvern and Abberley 

 hills. The progress of the Survey across Worcester- 

 shire into the central parts of the midlands had given 

 him ample opportunity of studying these breccias. He 

 still further elaborated his observations, and com- 

 municated them in the following February (1855) to 

 the Geological Society. He was now in the full tide 

 of glacial enthusiasm. The old Welsh glaciers had 

 acquired renewed interest from his experiences in 

 Switzerland, and he had endeavoured to track their 

 course and measure their thickness by the markings 

 they had left upon the rocks. He obtained renewed 

 proofs of the two periods of glaciation he had already 

 indicated, and now found that at the time of its 

 greatest extension the ice had actually passed across 

 some of the larger valleys, such as those of Llanberis 

 and Nant Francon. He ascertained by direct measure- 

 ments of the heights of the striation on the rocks that 

 the ice of the greater glaciers was about 1300 feet 

 thick. 



After much delay the Geological Survey was at 

 last extended to Scotland in the autumn of 1854, and 

 the Local Director himself undertook the task of 

 beginning the work. The state of the Ordnance 

 Survey county maps on the six -inch scale left little 

 choice as to the district where geological work should 

 be started. Ramsay finally determined to commence 

 on the coast at Dunbar, where he could trace in the base 



