346 DIRECTOR-GENERAL OF THE SURVEY CHAP, x 



him with astonishment and delight. He boated down 

 Lac Bourget, walked over hills strikingly ice-worn, 

 and picked up fragments of gneiss, granite, and other 

 rocks that had been brought down by the ice from the 

 heart of the distant Alps. He took the bearings of 

 the glacial striae, observed the positions, sizes, and 

 composition of the erratic blocks, and saw so much as 

 to fill him with the strongest desire to return and 

 make a more complete examination of the district for 

 comparison with the old glaciated areas so familiar 

 to him at home. 



From Aix the party made its way to Geneva, 

 spent a day or two there with the Swiss geologist, A. 

 Favre, and was back in England again by the loth 

 June. 



Ramsay had been elected President of the British 

 Association for this year, and the meeting was to be 

 held on the 25th August at Swansea. In the quiet 

 of his retreat at Beaumaris he prepared the presi- 

 dential address. He chose a thoroughly geological 

 theme, and contrived to say a little on all the branches 

 of the science in which he himself had specially worked. 

 After a general historical introduction he launched into 

 the subject of metamorphism, and then into that of 

 the volcanic eruptions of former periods, whence he 

 naturally passed to the structure and relative ages of 

 mountain-chains. The salt-lakes of past times and 

 the recurrence of fresh - water conditions again and 

 again in geological history were next touched upon, 

 before the fascinating topic of glaciers and their 

 operations was reached. In summing up his dis- 

 course, the President professed once more his geo- 

 logical faith as an uncompromising Uniformitarian, 

 declaring that, from the period of the oldest known 



