ANNIVEKSABT ADDRESS OF THE PKESIDEXT. 39 



and being on the look-out for an active and clever assistant, he 

 made choice of the young Scot who had shown his skill so signally 

 in working out the structure of a district which Murchison himself 

 had studied with Sedgwick many years before. Kamsay accord- 

 ingly came to London about the middle of March 1841, and was 

 introduced into the company of the leading geologists of the time, 

 dining at the Geological Club, which then met at the ' Crown and 

 Anchor,' by Temple Bar, and meeting, among others, Sedgwick, 

 LyeU, Buckland, Phillips, Greenough, Fitton, Sopwith, Edward 

 Forbes, and Owen. At the last moment Murchison's plans were 

 changed. Instead of going to America he decided upon continuing 

 his researches in Russia, and could not take Eamsay with him. 

 But, with characteristic thoughtfulness, he did not start on his 

 journey until he had secured for his young friend a place on the 

 Geological Survey under De la Beche. Within a few days there- 

 after, viz. in April 1841, Ramsay joined the staff of the Survey at 

 Tenby, and began that distinguished official career which lasted for 

 more than forty years. 



Long after that early time, when he had risen to have charge of 

 the whole operations of the Survey, Eamsay used to recall the 

 feeling of wonderment with which in these first months he went 

 out day after day to geologize, not as the chance occupation of a 

 hohday snatched from the cares of business, nor as the relaxation 

 of a brief sojourn in the country in search of renovated health, but 

 as the ordinary and regular employment of his life. It all seemed 

 like a dream ; every day came with the zest of a holiday. Under 

 De la Beche he soon acquired the methods of mapping and section- 

 drawing which that incomparable field-geologist had introduced, 

 and he was able to break ground for himself among the ancient 

 rocks of South "Wales, at that time almost unknown. 



He found leisure this year to see through the press the little 

 volume on Arran which embodied the results of his survey of that 

 island. This, his earliest work and one of the most admirable that 

 he ever wrote, struck the key-note which we find steadily vibrating 

 through all his subsequent publications. It showed him to be 

 above everything a skilful decipherer of geological structure, a lucid 

 expositor of his observations, a cautious and yet bold generalizer 

 from the facts gathered by him, a lover of nature, and above all of 

 that mountain-world where nature may be communed with in her 

 sterner and more impressive moods, and lastly, a writer on geology 

 whose reading was not confined to the records of his own science, 



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