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Released from official
life, and free to go where he pleased in this country or to travel
abroad, Sir Andrew Ramsay looked forward to a few years of pleasant rest
and cheerful occupation in the pursuits that more especially interested
him. And to his friends the regret at seeing him retire from active life
was tempered by the reflection that now at last he would be able to work
as he chose at those problems which, by the pressure of his Survey
duties and his engagements in London, he had been prevented from
thoroughly investigating. But time and over-exertion had done their work
upon him. His life henceforward was marked by a calm, painless, and
gradual decline. His days for mental exertion were now at an end.
For a short time after
his retirement he remained in London, and had a fair enjoyment of life,
usually finding his way to the Athenaeum Club in the course of the
afternoon, and having a game of billiards with some friend there. When
summer came, and brought with it the time for retreating to Beaumaris,
he was able to take short walks and to indulge his favourite pastime of
steering a boat. He tried to do a little writing on a geographical
subject which he had undertaken. As the autumn approached, the second
daughter was again ordered abroad for the winter, and as Sir Andrew had
such a love of mountains, it was determined to move the whole family to
St. Moritz.
In the early part of the
season the place gave him great pleasure, for he was able to take some
fairly long walks, and it was a delight to him to find himself once more
in the chain of the Alps. But in the middle of November the snow came,
not to depart for the rest of the winter. hereafter every walk involved
a slippery descent from the hotel and a slippery ascent in returning.
The consequent fatigue became so great that his pedestrian excursions
were necessarily limited. Sledge-driving proved equally impracticable,
for the keen frosty air induced severe pain round the glass eye. He was
thus cooped up in the hotel, the most practicable exercise available
being obtained by pacing up and down a covered verandah open to the air.
By the end of March the
party was glad to take flight by the Maloja to Chiavenna, and thence by
steamer on the Lake of Como to Cadenabbia. Sir Andrew enjoyed watching
the pleasure which these charming scenes gave to his daughters, who saw
them for the first time, and he seemed himself also to appreciate their
beauty; but the confinement of the preceding winter had left its mark
upon him. The old spirit of happy comprehension of what he saw, and the
keen zest with which he scrutinised new physical features and sought to
interpret them, were now only too visibly on the wane. The route
homeward included a halt of a fortnight at Venice, which he thoroughly
enjoyed, and another for the same length of time at Pallanza, which also
gave him much pleasure.
The. family returned to
England in time to spend the summer at Beaumaris, where Sir Andrew's
diminished strength was painfully shown by his shortening walks. They
went back, however, to the Continent in the autumn in order to pass the
winter at Hyeres. The journey homeward in May (1882) proved to be the
last of Ramsay's experiences of foreign travel. He was well enough to be
greatly interested in the Roman remains of Southern France. At Nimes his
antiquarian zeal was kindled by the grand amphitheatre and the baths and
the Maison Carree. He walked across the Pont de Gard by the old water
channel. Farther north his ardour for the relics of the past was renewed
in Auvergne, as he paced the mouldering rampart of the Bill of Gergovia,
and pictured to himself Csesar's siege and the heroic defence of
Vercingetorix. Fain would he have climbed the Puy de Dome, but the
weather prevented him from attempting it.
For the next two years
Sir Andrew and his family came up to London for the winter, but he
hardly ever went to the Athenaeum, and was only able slowly to walk up
and down the streets in the neighbourhood of his house in Cromwell
Crescent. It was then resolved to break up the London home, in order
that he might remain permanently at Beaumaris. There he continued for a
time to enjoy the panorama of his own Caernarvon shire mountains, and
was much more in the open air than he could have been in London. But
from this time forward nothing could be done save to watch with sad and
affectionate eyes the progress of the slow decline. His mind does not
seem in these last years to have reverted often to his geological days;
at least he seldom spoke of them. His memory would sometimes dwell on
the long bygone days of his childhood.
He continued to read with
delight the Waverley Novels, and the humour of Dean Ramsay's
Reminiscences of Scottish Life never failed to call out his merry laugh.
His general health remained good, but his strength, bodily and mental,
seemed imperceptibly to ebb away.
Almost every fine day
until 1891 he was wheeled out in a bath-chair and placed in some sunny,
sheltered spot where he could watch the mountains and the sea, while his
wife sat and read or worked beside him. These daily little journeys
continued to give him great pleasure, until at last, in September of
that year, his increasing weakness made them no longer possible.
Eventually he was unable to bear the fatigue of rising and being
dressed, so kept his bed until, on the 9th December, he passed gently
away.
He was buried in the
churchyard that surrounds the pretty little church of Llansadwrn, among
his wife's people. The spot was a favourite one with him for it commands
on the one side a noble view of the whole range of the high grounds of
North Wales from the Orme's Head, through the Snowdon group, down to the
far Rivals, and on the other a wide sweep of the undulating plains of
Anglesey. It was fitting that one who had loved Wales so ardently, who
had spent the best years of his life there, and who had done more than
any other writer to unravel at once its geology and its physical
geography, should be laid to rest within view of the peak of Snowdon,
and within sound of the rush of the tide through the Strait of Menai.
This memoir would be
incomplete if it did not give some retrospect and summary of the work
achieved in the lifetime which it has attempted to describe. It is too
soon yet properly to appraise the ultimate value of this work in the
general progress of science. But we may at least group Sir Andrew
Ramsay's labours in the several categories under which they may be
classified in order to form some conception of the general character and
sum of his contributions to the geology of his time.
I. The department of
Structural Geology comprises his earliest and his latest labours,
beginning with his little pamphlet on Arran, and ending with the
voluminous second edition of the monograph on North Wales. Between these
two limits he accomplished a large amount of investigation directed
towards the elucidation of the geological structure of Britain. In
England his own share of this labour was for the most part merged in
that of his colleagues. For, in his eagerness for the repute of the
Survey as a body, he was careless of his individual fame. Undoubtedly
his own greatest achievement is his mapping in North Wales, and more
particularly the working out of the structure of the complicated and
mountainous ground around Snowdon. It must be remembered by those who
now examine the geology of that region that when Ramsay surveyed it the
science of petrography hardly existed at all in England. He had no
assistance from the microscope, and scarcely any from the chemical
laboratory. He had to determine his rocks with no more help than could
be given by a pocket-lens, and he was guided in this matter largely by
the behaviour of the masses in the field. It should not, therefore, be
matter for surprise that a geologist of to-day, coming with ali the
appliances of modern petrography, may be able to improve the
nomenclature followed by Ramsay, and to show that he had been mistaken
in some of his determinations, as where, for instance, he may have
classed lavas as tuffs, or tuffs as lavas. The surprise ought rather to
be that a man with only field-evidence and his geological instinct to
guide him, should have succeeded in unravelling so admirably the
complications of so difficult a region.
British geology lies
under a deep obligation to Ramsay for the skill and insight with which
he deciphered the relics of the older Palaeozoic volcanoes. Without
attempting to enter into the minutia; of the mineralogical and chemical
constitution of the rocks, he seized upon the salient features that
illustrated ancient volcanic action, and he supplied, in the Survey
Memoirs and in the Descriptive Catalogue of the Jermyn Street Museum,
the first detailed and connected description of the different epochs of
volcanic activity in the Silurian period in Britain.
On the maps and sections
of the Geological Survey he expressed most of his results in structural
geology, and it may be fearlessly asserted that at the time of their
appearance these publications were unsurpassed for clearness, beauty,
and accuracy. Even where the mapping was mainly the work of his
colleagues, it usually had the benefit of help from his skilful hand and
sound judgment. His Geological Map of England and Wales, reduced from
the Survey sheets and other sources of information, is still the most
useful small map of the kingdom, and his general Geological Map of the
British Isles is a convenient compendium of British geology.
II. In Stratigraphy much
of Ramsay s work is so intimately bound up with his labours in
structural geology as to be hardly separable. But his two presidential
addresses to the Geological Society mark a distinct epoch in
stratigraphical work. Darwin had dwelt upon the imperfection of the
Geological Record. Ramsay proceeded to indicate the historical meaning
of this imperfection. He pointed out the various breaks :n the
succession of the stratified formations of Britain, and by his wide
practical knowledge of the subject, gave it a clearness and significance
which it had not before been suspected to possess. He showed that these
breaks sometimes consist of actual unconforinabiHties, arising from
disturbance and denudation, and demonstrating a long lapse of time
unrecorded by stratified deposits ; while in other instances they are
marked by no visible discontinuity of the stratification, but by a
sudden and more or less marked change in the fossils characteristic of
two apparently consecutive formations. His careful tabulated lists of
genera and species that pass from one formation to another finally
annihilated the long-lived delusion that each geological system was
complete in itself, and was separated, by a general destruction and
re-creation of life, from the formation that succeeded it. Accepting
Darwin's views on the origin of species, he argued that the relative
lapse of tune between different formations might be determined by the
greater or less distinction between them as regards their organic
contents. By this line of argument he was led to the novel and
suggestive conclusion that periods of time, of which there was in the
geological record of Britain no strati-graphical chronicle, might be
much longer than those which were represented by stratified formations.
These doctrines were by
far the most important which had been taught in regard to the principles
of stratigraphy since these principles were first determined by the
discoveries of William Smith.
III. Connecting his
Stratigraphkal with his Physiographical researches comes the series of
papers in which he discussed the former existence of Continents, or of
terrestrial conditions, during the deposition of the geological record.
He dwelt especially upon the red colour of certain formations, their
barrenness in organic remains, the proofs of the occurrence of traces of
land animals and plants in them, and the similarity presented by them to
the deposits of salt lakes or inland seas. In this way he tried to
restore in some degree the physical geography of ancient periods of the
earth's history. He attempted also, from the same kind of reasoning, to
estimate the relative value of the old continental periods, and came to
the conclusion that the period which began with the Old Red Sandstone
and closed with the New Red Marl may have been comparable to all the
time that has elapsed from the beginning of the deposition of the Lias
down to the present day.
IV. In Physiography
Ramsay's work was abundant, as well as remarkably original and
important. It may be grouped in three subdivisions: (i) Denudation in
General; (2) The History of River-valleys; and (3) The Results of the
Operations of Ice.
(1) The early paper on
the Denudation of South Wales, published in 1846, in the first volume of
the Memoirs of the Geological Survey, was undoubtedly the most important
essay on the subject which up to that time had appeared. Much had
previously been written on the question of denudation, but it was of the
vaguest nature. It was Ramsay's merit that he based his discussion upon
the results of careful surveying. He had traced out the structure of a
complicated geological region, and was able to show what should have
been the form of the surface had it depended entirely on geological
structure. He was thus in a position to demonstrate how much material
had been removed by denudation, and how far the process of removal had
been guided by geological structure. It is true, as he himself
afterwards confessed, that at that time he assigned too much power to
the sea, and too little to the subaerial agents, in the lowering of a
mass of land. But his exposition of the old base-level of ancient
erosion, or 'plain of marine denudation,' as he called it, will ever be
a classical study in geological literature.
Subsequently, as he
realised more and more how mighty had been the action of rain, frost,
rivers, glaciers, and other subaerial forces in carving the surface of
the land, he came boldly forward to take the lead among British
geologists in enforcing this doctrine.
(2) During the last ten
years of his official life the physical history of river-valleys
exercised a peculiar fascination on Sir Andrew's mind. The subject had
for many years engaged his attention, but not until the appearance in
1862 of his friend Jukes's remarkable memoir on the river-valleys of the
south of Ireland did he realise how the problem might be satisfactorily
attacked. He was led to the conclusion that the denudation of the Weald
had been effected by subaerial waste, and that the cause of the flow of
the rivers, from that central low tract through the encircling rim of
chalk downs, was to be sought in the ancient topography of the region,
when the streams descended from a central, still unremoved dome or ridge
of chalk. Extending this process of reasoning, he afterwards discussed
the main causes whereby the rivers of England had been led to flow in
the courses which they now follow. There was undoubtedly a good deal of
speculation in this discussion, but his treatment of the subject was
full of suggestiveness, and pointed out the direction in which, with
perhaps a larger array of facts, the question might eventually be
solved.
Subsequently he attacked
the history of individual rivers, working it out in more detail along
the same lines as he had already followed. In this manner he traced the
successive stages which, in his opinion, had led to the excavation of
the present valley of the Rhine, showing that in Miocene time the flow
of the drainage between the Black Forest and the Vosges had been from
north to south, or towards the great hollow lying to the north of the
Alps, that subsequent disturbance and elevation of the Alpine chain
tilted the ground in such a manner that the drainage was reversed, and
the streams from the tract of the Alps were collected into a river which
found its way northward, and gradually excavated the valley and gorge rn
which the present Rhine still flows. Though it cannot be demonstrated
that such have been the successive stages in the history of the course
of this river, the available evidence makes Ramsay's explanation highly
probable.
The later application of
the same principles of interpretation to the history of the valley of
the Dee in Wales led him into still ampler fields of speculation,
because dealing with a vaster and dimmer geological past. He could not
claim to have proved every step in his chain of argument, but he
undoubtedly propounded a method whereby, if such questions are capable
of solution, they may most advantageously be attempted.
(3) It was in his
researches among the traces of ancient glaciers and ice-sheets that Sir
Andrew accomplished his most original physiographical work. His
demonstration of the occurrence of evidence of two glaciations in Wales
was an important step in the. elucidation of the history of the Ice Age,
for he showed that after a general glaciation of the Welsh hills and
valleys, and the deposition of the drift upon them, a later time came
when the ice existed only as local glaciers in the valleys among the
higher mountains.
But his name will be most
widely known for his theory of the Glacial Origin of certain
Lake-basins. This theory has been warmly attacked and as vigorously
defended. The contest regarding it still continues, though more than
thirty years have passed since it was published. This is not the place
for a review of the voluminous arguments that have been adduced for and
against the theory. If we look upon the doctrine as promulgated by its
author, and not in the extravagant form in which it sometimes appears in
the hands of too zealous partisans, we must admit that Ramsay was the
first to call attention to the remark able fact that lakes are
especially numerous in the glaciated tracts of the northern hemisphere.
Taking the rock-basin lakes on which he based his doctrine of glacial
erosion, it is a fact that while they are prodigiously abundant in
glaciated tracts like the gneisses of Canada, Scandinavia, Finland, and
Scotland, they either do not occur, or are excessively rare, outside of
ice-worn areas. It is likewise true that these rock-basins have once
been filled with ice, for roches moutomides occur round their margins
and rise from their bottoms. There can be no doubt also that the ice
which filled them was in motion, for the rocks that enclose them are
scored and polished, and the direction of the striae shows that the ice
descended into the basins at their upper end and ascended from them at
the lower. Ramsay went farther, and insisted that the hollows themselves
had actually been dug out by the moving ice. I have myself no doubt that
he was essentially right in this contention. That there may be
difficulty in the universal application of his doctrine will be readily
admitted, and was fully recognised by himself. He carefully guarded
himself by the very title of his original paper, 'On the Glacial Origin
of Certain Lakes,' from being supposed to have one explanation for all
sheets of fresh water over the surface of the globe. But that the lakes
in glaciated regions are connected in origin with the general denudation
of the regions in which they lie is a fact which few geologists who have
carefully mapped the rocks around these water-basins will dispute. And
the only agent known to us to be capable of the kind of erosion which
would produce such basins is land-ice. On any other hypothesis yet
proposed the lake-basins are not only unintelligible, but contradictory
to all that is now well ascertained regarding the progress of denudation
and the influence of geological structure upon topography.
In connection with Sir
Andrew Ramsay's glacial work, reference should be made here to his
papers on the evidence for the existence of ice in Palaeozoic time. The
Permian examples cited by him were certainly striking, but the general
feeling among geologists seems to be that the evidence is not
convincing. The cases from the Lower Silurian, Old Red Sandstone, and
Carboniferous formations are still less conclusive.
As a contribution to
Physiography his volume on The Physical Geology and Geography of Great
Britain is worthy of special mention. It puts in clear and untechnical
language the evidence on which geology proceeds to trace the bygone
history of a terrestrial region. Unfortunately, the last edition was
brought out by him when his powers had already begun to fail, and he was
led to weight the book by the addition of various already published
papers and essays which, though excellent for the purposes for which
they were written, were somewhat out of place in his otherwise charming
little volume.1
V. Sir Andrew made few
contributions to the literature of the History of Geology. His two
inaugural lectures at University College presented a rapid sketch of the
leading features in the progress of geological research up to this
century, and his last address as President of Section C of the British
Association at York in 1881 gave an outline of the advance of geology
during the fifty years preceding that date.
He was a thorough
uniformitarian in geology. Having early imbibed his theoretical views
from Lyell's Principles, he maintained them to the end, and took
occasion when he was President of the British Association at Swansea,
and consciously approaching the end of his active career, to proclaim
them as a last declaration of faith to his contemporaries.
VI. In this retrospect of
the literary and other work which Sir Andrew Ramsay accomplished,
reference should not be omitted to his contributions to the Saturday
Review. Sometimes these were criticisms of publications, and in that
case often took as their subject the maps and memoirs of some Colonial
Survey. He was thus enabled to do signal service to his friend Logan,
then struggling with the Canadian Philistines, who saw no practical good
in geological work of any kind. But now and then he let his fancy loose
in the pages of the Saturday, and treated geological and other topics
with the light playfulness so characteristic of his talk, but in which
the nature of his official writings hardly allowed him to indulge in
print.
VII. But it is not by the
visible amount of published work that we can rightly estimate the extent
of Sir Andrew Ramsay's influence in promoting the advance of his
favourite science. For nearly thirty years he was a teacher of geology.
Year by year a fresh band of young men came to listen to him, and to
carry the fruits of his instruction to all parts of the world. Season
after season he lectured to working men, who flocked in hundreds to hear
him. His lectures were not written out, but delivered from notes, and
were always kept up to the latest conditions of the science. Many a time
some new deduction that had been simmering in his mind for a while would
be communicated first of all to his students. In the debates at the
Geological Society, also, he would often make known some fresh
observation, or some novel presentation of known facts, or some
suggestive speculation which had recently taken shape in his mind.
Indeed, much of his work was published only in this way, for writing
became increasingly irksome to him; but in the excitement of lecturing
or of discussion he would pour out from his full stores of information,
and taking his audience into his confidence, would flash out new views
that he had never communicated to any one before. There was always
something remarkably suggestive in his lectures. He loved to put broad
and striking views of geological principles and theory before his
audience, and sought thus to excite an interest that would search for
detail, rather than to weary it by dwelling on the detail himself. He
spoke with a good deal of facial expression, his brow sometimes
wrinkling with his earnestness to make a point clear, and again beaming
with a kindly smile as he was enjoying his discourse, and felt that he
was carrying his auditors with him. The working men used to crowd round
his table at the end of a lecture to ask questions, and one of them once
said to him, 'You are the best lecturer I ever heard in my life; and you
always look so happy in it.'
There was another form of
instruction less palpable perhaps than that communicated in formal
prelections, but not less valuable—the practical training which he gave
to his men on the staff of the Geological Survey. Those who have enjoyed
that training look back upon it as one of the privileges of their lives.
The influence of his example was contagious. A district which had seemed
hopelessly entangled and insufferably dull, after a visit from the
Director came to be seen in a new light. Its very difficulties grew to
be centres of attraction, and its dulness was changed into freshened
interest. That this influence has not been without effect in the higher
education of the countrj will be seen from the number of men trained
under Ramsay who have held or now hold University chairs or other
educational appointments in this country and in the colonies.
But above and beyond the
impress of his scientific achievements Sir Andrew Ramsay's high position
among his contemporaries was largely determined by his individual
personality. His frank manly bearing, his well-cut features beaming with
intelligence and with a sweet childlike candour, his ready powers of
conversation, his wide range of knowledge, his boyish exuberance of
spirits, his simplicity and modesty of nature, his sterling integrity,
perfect straightforwardness, and high sense of duty, his generous
sympathy and untiring helpfulness, marked him out as a man of singular
charm, and endeared him to a wide circle of friends who, while they
admired him for his genius, loved him for the beauty and brightness of
his character. |
