1859-1860 SERIOUS ILL-HEALTH 261 



Scotland, he complained of weariness. 1 The symptoms 

 of mental exhaustion increased during the autumn. 

 He had for the first time taken a permanent house in 

 London, having hitherto only occupied furnished 

 rooms. But hardly had he settled in the new home 

 when it became evident that he was in no fit condition 

 for London life, and more particularly to undertake his 

 usual course of lectures at the School of Mines. 

 Towards the end of December it was arranged that 

 the lectures should be given by his colleague Jukes, 

 while Ramsay himself went to the house of his helpful 

 and sympathetic friend, Dr. Wright of Cheltenham, 

 under whose care, with entire cessation of work and 

 worry, it was anticipated that speedy convalescence 

 would be secured. But the recovery was not to be 

 so easily effected. He was ordered to abstain from 

 all work for a time, and in order to obtain com- 

 plete rest and change, he and Mrs. Ramsay with 

 the children went abroad. He wrote to me just 

 before leaving (3ist March 1860): 'I sail on Tues- 

 day with bag, baggage, fishing - basket, rod, flies, 

 sketch-books, Shakespeare, and the musical glasses 

 in the shape of sundry minor authors. I am to be 

 away, if nothing specially intervene, for six months, 

 but I think the less we say about that the better ; and 

 if any one by any chance asks you anything about it, 

 several months is a convenient word, with the addition 

 that I join the Scotch geologists as soon as I come 

 back, and also that Sir Roderick says he will pay 



1 During one of these rambles with me in Fife our conversation turned on the 

 Boulder clay and the mysteries of its origin. We both felt how unsatisfactory 

 was the received explanation of iceberg action and submergence. I was thus led 

 to study this deposit, and to reach thereby the conclusion, at which Ramsay also 

 simultaneously and independently arrived from a consideration of other evidence, 

 that the great glaciation was the work of land-ice. This change of view was 

 completed before the summer of 1861. 



