Vol. 60.] ANNIVERSARY ADDRESS. l.wii 



employed to trace the boundary-line between the Lower and Upper 

 Silurian formations in Shropshire and the adjacent tracts of Wales : 

 and Aveline was now commissioned, in 1855. to proceed to South 

 Wales to correct the obvious inaccuracies of the maps of that region, 

 to insert important stratigraphical boundary -lines, and to revise the 

 igneous rocks, especially separating the basic from the acid series. 

 At the end of the letter of instructions sent to him by Ramsay came 

 this injunction : ' Finally, do not spare horse-flesh or car-hire to 

 do it quickly.* 



When Ramsay was making his preparations in 1851 for com- 

 mencing the Survey in Scotland, he thought at first of taking Aveline 

 as his chief assistant in the work, but the pressure of the revision 

 in South Wales led to the abandonment of this intention and the 

 substitution of Mr. H. H. Howell in his stead. When I first joined 

 the Survey in 1855, the original intention of the Local Director had 

 been to place me with Aveline in Pembrokeshire ; but this idea 

 was likewise abandoned, partly from the need for pushing on the 

 Scottish Survey, and partly from the good progress already made in 

 the South Welsh revision. But I well remember the account of 

 Aveline given me at that time by Eamsay — a tall, dark, silent, big- 

 booted man who strode with gigantic steps over the hills ; whose 

 eyes seemed always directed towards the front, but never let any- 

 thing escape them ; who wrote like a schoolboy, but was the ablest 

 field-geologist on the staff. Eamsay's diary contains an entry in 

 which, referring to a meeting that had been arranged with Aveline 

 among the hills of North Wales, he draws the following picture of 

 his colleague : — 



' While loitering about, taking a final look, I spied Aveliue coming down 

 anxiously, with his hat pulled over his eyes, his coat-collar turned up. hi> 

 gaiters hanging about his heels, taking long strides and looking out ahead, but 

 never holloaing, as another man might have done." 



His silent demeanour passed into a proverb in the Survey. It 

 probably reached its climax when, in company with one of his 

 junior colleagues, he spent a whole day among the Welsh hills, and 

 his conversation was said to have consisted only of two words. In 

 the morning, as he passed a crag of rock, he tapped it with his 

 hammer, and remarked ' Grits.' In the evening, on the way home- 

 wards, he had to chip another block, and again broke silence with 

 k more Grits.* And yet there were times when, in congenial com- 

 pany, his natural reserve and taciturnity would almost melt away, 

 and when his eyes would glisten as he told some recollection of old 



