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Before we follow the
subject of this biography in his new sphere of duty and responsibility
it will be of advantage to look for a moment at the state of the Survey
when he was called to be the head of it. He was no longer to be
immediately responsible for the personal supervision of the field-work.
It is interesting, therefore, to consider in what condition he left the
mapping in England and Wales, and how far the Survey had advanced in
Scotland and Ireland, which were now to be under his jurisdiction.
In England and Wales the
only untouched tracts were Norfolk and Suffolk, with portions of Essex
and Cambridgeshire, the greater part of Lincolnshire and Yorkshire, and
the north-western portion of Cumberland and Northumberland. The
field-work was being pushed forward in the six northern counties,
Northumberland, Durham, Cumberland, Westmoreland, Yorkshire, and
Lancashire. A group of surveyors was busy in Lincolnshire,
Nottinghamshire, and Leicestershire, and another in Essex,
Hertfordshire, and parts of the home-counties. As for some years past
all the surface-geology had been traced upon the maps as well as the
outcrops of the older works underneath, a considerable part of England
had now been surveyed for Drift
In Scotland the survey,
extending westward from the area where Ramsay began in 1854, had
stretched across the island from the mouth of the Firth of Tay to the
mouth of the Clyde, and southwards to a wavy line drawn from
Berwick-on-Tweed to Wigtown. To here were still large tracts of the
counties of Berwick, Roxburgh, Dumfries, Kirkcudbright, Wigtown, and Ayr
to be surveyed. The Highlands had not yet been touched.
In Ireland all the
country south of a line drawn from Clew Bay to Dundalk had been
surveyed, and most of it had been published. The ground to the east of a
line from Dundalk to Lough Neagh had likewise been in great part
surveyed and published. All the northern part of the country was still
unmapped, including the north-western tracts of Mayo, Donegal,
Londonderry, Tyrone, nearly the whole of Antrim and Fermanagh, with
large tracts of Sligo, Leitrim, Monaghan, and Armagh.
The duties of
Director-General of the Geological Survey and Director of the Museum of
Practical Geology are necessarily to a large extent administrative. But
as far as possible he keeps himself in touch with the field-work by
personally visiting the districts that are being mapped, and becoming
acquainted with the details. By making himself familiar with the
problems encountered in each of the three kingdoms, he is enabled to
bring the experience of one branch of the Survey to bear upon the
difficulties of the others, and thus to ensure more rapid progress as
well as more harmonious results over the whole United Kingdom. All maps,
sections, and memoirs, are submitted to him before publication, and in
this way a good deal of editorial work is imposed upon him. The amount
of Survey correspondence is thus necessarily large and constant. The
Director-General is, further, the official channel of communication with
his own and with other departments of Government, as well as with the
general public. Endless are the applications he receives for information
or advice on geological questions. At one moment he is asked for
assistance in supplying an arsenal or fort with water; at another he is
requested to inform a government board where a prison or a workhouse had
best be placed. One Colonial government inquires of him whether in his
opinion water is likely to be obtained at a particular spot which he may
never have seen or heard of. Another sends home a box of earth and
stones with a request to know whether the material affords hopeful
indications of gold. A landed proprietor in England asks him why no coal
has been found on his estate, another forwards a parcel of 'specimens,'
and wishes to know what useful minerals he may look for in the places
from which they were taken. A third sends a so-called 'fossil,' dug upon
the estate, in the belief that it is some unique treasure, when it
proves to be merely a lump of inorganic concretion. In numberless
questions of drainage, road-making, railway-engineering, water-supply,
choosing sites for buildings, and other matters where a knowledge of
geology has a practical bearing, applications are continually made to
the Geological Survey for assistance. It may readily be believed that
the Director-General is thus involved in a large amount of extraneous
business, besides that which more properly arises from his ordinary
official duties.
The quantity of
letter-writing which now fell upon Ramsay, whether by his own hand or by
that of a secretary, was often so large that it left him hardly time for
other avocations. Amid the multitude of letters he was glad to keep them
as brief as might be. He could comparatively seldom indulge in the
pleasant gossiping epistles which hitherto he had been wont to send to
his friends and colleagues, but restricted himself more and more to the
absolutely essential business. Nevertheless for a few years he contrived
to find opportunity for putting on paper some of the observations he had
made on the origin of the features of landscapes, and for communicating
papers on this subject to the Geological Society.
Except that he was more
involved in official routine, and had less time for inspection of
field-work and for original research of his own, his life as
Director-General passed much in the same way as that of Director had
done. One year slipped away like another, only marked by longer or
shorter spells of London life. But he had one great resource in a house
at Beaumaris left to Mrs. Ramsay by an old friend. To this retreat he
betook himself more and more with his wife and family. There, away from
the thousand distractions of town, he attended to his correspondence and
worked at the geological or literary undertakings which duty or choice
imposed on him. The mountains of Caernarvonshire rose in front of his
windows to remind him, as he felt himself no longer young, that he had
been a good climber in his day, and that on their flanks and among their
wynds and crags he had done some of the best geological labour of his
life.
Ramsay had now gained the
position which for so many years he had wished to reach. But it must be
confessed that the reward came to him too late to enable him to profit
by it as he would have done had it been conferred ten or fifteen years
sooner. He had probably never quite recovered from the effects of that
disastrous break-down in 1860. Had he been able to free himself from the
burden of his lectureship at the School of Mines, he might perhaps have
been restored to complete health, and have escaped from that mental
weariness which his friends and colleagues used sorrowfully to watch as
it increased upon him during each succeeding session of the school. Even
the advancement to be Director-General did not throw off this incubus.
The income of the appointment was reduced by the amount of his salary as
professor, and he was compelled to go on lecturing for five years
longer, until the Treasury at length agreed to restore the emoluments of
the office to what they had formerly been, and to permit him to resign
his lectureship.
In the early autumn the
new Director-General made an official tour in Ireland, in order to
become personally acquainted with the various officers in that part of
the United Kingdom, and also to see some of the more salient features of
Irish geology, of which as yet he had not been able to obtain any
knowledge by actual examination in the field. The following letters
supply us with some pictures of the tour :—
Larne, 29th September
1872.
My dear Mrs. Cookman—I am
at Larne, in Antrim, some twenty miles or so north of Belfast, and have
with me my good friend John F. Campbell, ycleped of Islay. [John F.
Campbell, born 1821, died 1885, author of Tales of the West Highlands,
was also fond of geological observation. He had travelled far and wide,
and was the author of the picturesque and entertaining work Frost and
Fire, besides other volumes of travel.] And this is how it happened.
Being in London against my will, in re a fight in the Irish branch of
the Survey, I heard that Campbell was also in London n a dismantled
state. . . . So here we are! At Dublin I transacted a deal of business,
saw some marvellous antiquities at the Irish Academy, and then with my
colleague Mr. Hull, Director for Ireland, we started for Dundalk, where
besides seeing the geology, we visited Cuchullin's Rath and saw the
grave of Fin M'Coul; worked our way to Newry; from Newry to Warrenpoint,
and joined there a fine young fellow called Traill, one of the Survey.
He looks something like what I did when I joined the Survey, only he is
much handsomer, sings a great deal better, but cannot jump so high. We
saw the Carlingford country and all the Mourne Mountains, and progressed
to Newcastle, staying two or three days at each place. We were out on
the mountains or on the sea-cliffs every day, and have been battered by
equinoxial gales from every point of the compass. ... I do not expect to
be home for a fortnight or three weeks, for by easy stages I have to
continue this royal progress till we get to Galway, and then back across
the great central plain of Ireland to Dublin.
The Irish trouble to
which I alluded has lost me three weeks, otherwise I proposed going to
Germany, and perhaps taking Ella with me. But I begin now to see that it
will be too late for this year. I have such a pretty problem in my mind,
if I could only tackle it.
Florence Court, 5th
October 1872.
My dear Geikie—I got your
letter last night on our arrival here, Hull and self. I have been making
a grand round with Hull for more than a fortnight. . . . Here at Lord
Enniskillen's we stay till Monday. I have learned a great deal about
Irish geology and physical geography previously to me unknown. John
Campbell stuck by us as far as Armagh, when he branched or shunted off
to speak Gaelic to the folk in the north-west.
Thanks for your remarks
on Arran. I have seen the Mourne Mountain and Slieve Croob granites, and
one of them took away my breath. Here follows a rough sketch showing an
upper cake of contorted and baked Silurian strata with basalt dykes,
underlain and cut off by a mass of granite.] That is in the Mourne
Mountains, and the drawing represents the crest of a large mountain a
mile or two long; it is one of many such.
When I saw it drawn in a
section I could scarce believe it. But I saw it afterwards on the
ground, and it is true.—Ever sincerely, A. C. Ramsay.
The loughs of Ireland, as
might have been expected, roused the enthusiasm of one who had studied
lakes so closely, and had been involved in so much controversy about
them. Regarding those of Fermanagh he tells Mrs. Cookman : 'These lakes
here (Upper and Lower Lough Erne) first took away my breath, then made
my hair stand on end, and then confused my intellect so lamentably that
I doubt if I will ever write sense any more. They are the most curious
lakes I ever saw.'
Dublin, 11th October
1872.
My dear Geikie—Since I
wrote to you I have been at Sligo and Boyle, and I now write to say that
near Boyle I saw Old Red Sandstone, which doubtless is Lower, and it
contains bands of felspathic lavas precisely like those of the Pentlands
and Oban. I have seen no Old Red Sandstone that is not Lower and the
Carboniferous lies highly unconformably on it.
I now also know a deal
about the great Carbon iferous Limestone plains of the middle of
Ireland, and something of the coal-fields. Ireland must have been
somewhat like Finland long ago, before so many of its lakes got turned
into peat-mosses. I have also partly realised the Shannon and a lot of
other odds and ends in a three-and-a-half weeks' tour among Hull's men.
I have seen all the staff but two, and a very nice set of fellows they
are. I leave to-morrow night, and get home on Tuesday, I hope.—Ever
sincerely,
A. C. Ramsay.
One of the periodical
tasks of the Director-General is to receive the reports of the field
operations, of the indoor work, and of the Museum for the year, and to
prepare from them his Annual Report of progress, which is sent to the
Department of Science and Art to be presented to Parliament, and
published in the annual blue book of the Department. At the end of the
year these various returns are prepared by the officers of each branch
of the Survey and the curators of the collections in Jermyn Street,
Edinburgh, and Dublin, and the first duty of the chief after the begin-ing
of January is to master their contents, to procure additional
information or correction where needed, and to work the whole into a
narrative of all that has been done during the previous twelve months by
the different establishments under his control. Buried in the pages of a
blue book, these Annual Reports are much less widely known than the
labour spent upon them entitles them to be. It was now Ramsay's turn in
the early part of 1873 to compile the yearly statement. His personal
familiarity with the men in the field and their work enabled him to
attack the most difficult part of the task with spirit and success. In
these labours of routine, and indeed in all the official work of his
office! he received constant loyal and efficient aid from Mr. Edward
Best, who, originally appointed as an assistant geologist for service in
the field, had been transferred early in his career to the office in
Jermyn Street, where he acted as general secretary in charge of the
correspondence and the issue of publications. Mr. Best's long experience
made him familiar with all the details of the history and progress of
the Survey. He was a general favourite among the staff, and for many
years served as the right hand of his chief. [He joined the service in
1855 under De la Beche, and retired from it on 31st March 1893, carrying
with him the affectionate regard of all his colleagues.]
Ramsay still occasionally
contributed an article to the Saturday Review, and gave a Friday evening
discourse at the Royal Institution. In the pages of his favourite
'weekly' he wrote pleasantly about the history of Great Britain, taking
a much wider view into the past as well as into the future of the
subject than the ordinary historian is content with, and adding a
caution to our statesmen for the benefit of their successors fifty
thousand years hence, when a new glacial period shall begin to banish
man from the northern half of Europe. 'It behoves the Minister for the
Colonies,' he concludes, ' to see that our inter-tropical possessions
are kept in good order for the coming migration, for thel fortunes of
the British Islands will then be far below zero. One cold comfort
remains — the universal northern ice-sheet may possibly solve the Irish
difficulty.'
Another occupation of the
same winter was the writing of an article on the River Po for
Macmillan's Magazine. As his mind dwelt so much now on rivers and their
operations, he was led to recall what he had himself seen of the
workings of the Po and its tributaries on the southern flanks of the
Alps, and over the vast plains of Lombardy. He likewise read extensively
the literature of that great river. The paper which he now wrote was
translated by Gastaldi into Italian for the Bulletin of the Italian
Alpine Club, and separate copies of the translation were printed for the
Italian Government, that they might be distributed widely among local
authorities and others in Lombardy. In sending a copy of the Italian
version of the paper to Mrs. Cookman, Ramsay told her that he had '
heard from Italy that the article has helped to stir up the authorities
there in re their duty to their rivers and the people.'
Before the Royal
Institution he discoursed on 'Old Continents,' and sent me the following
account of the evening. 'I lectured last Friday [12th February 1873] on
"Old Continents" to a very full house. As I treated it, the subject was
quite new to every one there, and by good luck I was in the right humour
for lecturing. I restricted myself to the great continental epoch
between the close of the Upper Silurian and the end of the New Red Marl,
and put all episodes in consecutive order. The act of lecturing on it
suggested some new ideas which I did not broach, for I had quite enough
to do without them in an hour. However, perhaps they may bear fruit in a
paper for the Geological.'
Having been chosen by
Murchison as his literary executor, and charged with the writing of his
biography, I had applied to Ramsay for any of Mur-ehison's letters which
he could supply, and also for information as to the best way of
procuring materials from some of the old chiefs correspondents. He
answered as follows : ' I have no influence with Sedgwick. We are very
good friends, but he never quite forgets the Survey having turned his
Cambrian into Lower Silurian, so aiding Sir Roderick, without specially
meaning it. ... I doubt if Hughes will be able to help you in that
matter. Sedgwick is still sore about it. ... I never saw Wollaston, but
Greenough, Buckland, Warburton, and Fitton I knew. There ought also to
be De la Beche, Sedgwick, old John Taylor, Whewell, Mantell, Major
Clark, old Stokes, Sir Philip Egerton, Lord Enniskillen, Babbage, and
others. They used all to have a jollification at Lord E.'s rooms in
Jermyn Street after the meetings. Lord E. told me a lot of things last
autumn, which 1 now nearly forget.'
Of the voluminous memoir
on the Geology of North Wales, published in 1866, a new edition was now
required, and its author set about the necessary preparation. The house
at Beaumaris came then to be of more practical value to him than ever,
for while it allowed him to escape conveniently from London, and to keep
his family around him, it provided him with a home near the ground which
he might have to re-examine. This new edition continued to be one of his
main employments during the rest of his official life.
While at Beaumaris, in
the summer of 1873, he made a short excursion to St. David's, the
geology of which had in recent years been brought into prominence by Mr.
Salter and Dr. Hicks, whose conclusions did not quite coincide with
those expressed on the maps of the Geological Survey. Writing to Mrs.
Ramsay from that remote cathedral town on the 3rd August, he says : '
To-day (Sunday) we have been at the cathedral, and I sat in my old stall
and sang bass. But the music has sadly fallen off. The organ is
dismantled because of the repairs of the church, and there is only a
harmonium, and the singers are diminished. Scott is slowly restoring the
building, but there is still a great deal to do, with as yet
insufficient money.
'To-morrow we take a boat
and coast along for eight or ten miles to re-examine the coast section.
The weather is splendid, and it will be delightful. We have first-rate
boatmen, one being the captain of the lifeboat. . . . Now that I am
here, it would never do to leave the country without bringing the
geology of St. David's (which is now exciting so much attention) up to
the modern mark. Considering how ignorant I was in 1841, I wonder I did
it so well.'
Three days later, writing
to the same correspondent, he tells her : ' Probably we will start
tomorrow, drive up to Fishguard, and thence to Cardigan. I shall refresh
my memory on geological points by the way. . . . This is a moist, hot
climate, like Cornwall. Your very clothes get damp, and your gummed
envelopes get also damp and seal themselves.'
On his return to
Beaumaris he sent me the following account of the trip into
Pembrokeshire: ' I have been for a fortnight at St. David's seeing all
Hicks's discoveries among the Cambrian rocks and his Menevian strata,
which form a grey band, 550 feet thick, between the uppermost purple
Cambrian grits and the bottom of the Lingula Flags. Fossils numerous,
all of the same kind as those in the Cambrian beds, only some additional
genera and species, but none or few common to the Lingula Flags.
Etheridge I took with me, and David Homfray came also from Portmadoc. As
I knew before, there are boulder-beds at St. David's, but I did not know
that they contain chalk-flints, which are also found ir. Ramsey Island.
The country is undoubtedly moutonnd, and I saw on the coast in three
places striations running N.N.W. and S.S.E., pointing, in fact, to the
north of Ireland.
'My Contemporary Review
paper, as regards substance, is in all important points my two Red Rock
papers in the Geological Journal, only the subject is put consecutively.
... I. am satisfied that in Scotland there are two or three glacial
episodes in what Is commonly called Old Red. I have no doubt, however,
that you will work it out, and I see no reason against a Carboniferous
glacial episode. The day will come when all folk will allow a Silurian
one too, which I long ago inferred from the rocks on Carrick Moore's
land, and troubled his mind by printing the idea.
'Hicks I think is wrong
about his Laurentian axis at St. David's. I believe the area is Cambrian
metamorphosed into a kind of syenite, and that the granites there are,
like those of Anglesey, also meta-morphic. But I could not be supposed
to see all that in 1841 when I surveyed the area.'
He was able this summer
to carry out at last his intention of visiting the Rhine Valley, for the
purpose of studying the problem of its origin. Taking with him his
eldest daughter, and accompanied by his sister and his nephew (now
Professor William Ramsay of University College, London), he ascended the
river from Cologne, and remained a week at Bingen, making excursions up
the valley of the Nahe and the Rhine. Thence the party went to
Strasburg, and Ramsay took some geological expeditions into the Vosges
valleys for the solution of the question he had come to study. Being so
near, it was impossible to resist the pleasure of seeing some of his old
friends and former haunts in Switzerland. So with his travelling
companions, he made for Basle, Lucerne, and Meiringen, crossing the
Scheideck to Grindelwald, where he was much interested in the diminution
of the glaciers since he had previously seen them. By way of the Wengern
Alp, Lauterbrunnen, and Interlaken, the party reached Berne, where they
remained some days taking excursions with the venerable Studer„ They
then made for Bex, where Ramsay, with eyes now quickened to perceive the
profound interest of river-courses, was delighted to have an opportunity
of examining the valley of the Rhone where it bends sharply round at
Martigny,and farther down where the river is filling up the upper end of
the Lake of Geneva with sediment. Returning to Basle, they experienced
much kindness from thatdelight-ful veteran of Swiss geology, Peter
Merian, and from Professor Riitimeyer, and then made their way homeward
by the east side of the Rhine, through Heidelberg to Cologne. It had
been Ramsay's intention to descend the whole length of the grand old
river down to Rotterdam, but on looking into the state of the finances
of the party, he found that they had just money enough left to take them
straight back to London, which they reached by way of Ostend.
On his return he sent me
(26th September) a few jottings of his doings : ' I got home last night,
having solved my problem in a very different way from what
I expected. It was
curious to find all the supports to one's speculative views crumbling
away one after another. So I began again quae dispassionately in re the
Rhine, and the result is that I think I have done the gun trick, which
is too long to write about. I have also learned a deal of other odds and
ends. To Mrs. Cookman he wrote: 'Ella and I had a delightful journey. I
saw at least five of my old friends in Switzerland, two of them, alas!
over eighty years of age, but I rejoice to say quite hale and hearty But
I missed old Escher von der Linth, who is no more. I learnt heaps of
things, and will send you a memoir when it is written and printed, on
the physical history of the valley of the Rhine. If you and Betha will
come out with my wife and me, we'll explore the valley of the Rhone from
Geneva downwards, and next year do the Danube from its sources in the
Schwarzwald to ics mouth, and write joint memoirs on these subjects, for
I am rather crazy about rivers just at present, and it will be of great
advantage to the world if Louisa and you w ill get crazy too '
The results of this brief
continental excursion were quickly brought before the world. On the 4th
February 1874 Ramsay read an account of his observations to the
Geological Society in a paper on the Physical History of the Valley of
the Rhine, and on the 27th March he gave a Friday evening discourse on
the subject to the Royal Institution. A reference to his views on this
question will be made in the succeeding chapter.
Next summer, as was usual
now, he spent some time at Beaumaris, making excursions thence to
reexamine ground for the preparation of the Welsh Memoir. With the
company and assistance of Mr Hughes, formerly one of his staff, but who
had now succeeded Sedgwick as Woodwardian Professor at Cambridge, and
also with Mr. R. Etheridge, and Mr. I). Horn fray of Portmadoc, he
traversed a good deal of ground in the district of Cader Idris, Aran
Mowd-dwy,' .and Portmadoc. Rain and wind buffeted the party a good deal,
but the Director-General declared that ' every day hardened his old legs
more and more, and by the end he cared little for the fatigue.' In an
account of his doings (9th August) he wrote to me that ' the necessity
for a second edition of my North Wales is now urgent, and I am seriously
at work making out a new line of division, that between the base of the
Llandeilos and the top of the Tremadocs, or, en grand. between the
Lingula Flag series and the Llandeilos. I have accurately traced twenty
miles of it, and have for the first time (yesterday) got perplexed. We
have been at work for about eighteen days.'
Some further information
is given in a letter to his brother William, written from Portmadoc
during a subsequent excursion. (13th September 1874): 'I am busy
revising a deal of country and realising all the discoveries that have
turned up since Selwyn and I were here more than twenty-five years ago.
It involves the tracing of one new geological line that no one suspected
long ago, and which I surmised must exist ever since Sir Roderick and I
were in the north of Scotland some fifteen years ago.'
The progress of his work
and the nature of some of his engagements during the year 1875 are told
in the following letters :—
30th January 1875.
My dear Geikie—I highly
approve of your vindi cation of De la Beche [in proof-sheets of the Life
of Murchison. In fact, the one-sidedness lay all on the other side. . .
. Last Wednesday Ward read a second paper at the Geological Society on
the Cumbrian Lake-basins, going the whole hog in re their glacier
origin. Bonney allowed that he could go that length, but that the theory
in no way applied to the Swiss and Italian lakes. Since then 1 have
received a letter from Gastaldi enclosing a MS. of a paper to be read at
the Academy of Turin on Sunday, the 7th February, in which he proves
that all the great Italian lakes were produced by glacier erosion, and
giving good reasons for their special positions and relative sizes in
relation to the valleys in which they lie, and also their relations to
the Pliocene deposits of the valley of the Po. He wants my opinion on it
before it is read, which I will send h*m on Monday. In the meanwhile, my
wife is translating it, and I will publish it with his permission after
he has read it. It is a very important paper.— Ever sincerely, A. C.
Ramsay.
16th April 1875.
My dear Infanta [Miss
Johnes]—J do not think you can have any idea of the good that my visit
to Dolaucothi did to me physically and morally. I went on improving
after I got home, too, extending even to the art of lecturing within the
last few days. The pleasant quietness and the absence of all necessity
for being agreeable in your house did me a power of good. The dawdling
by the quiet waters and among my old friends the individual trees, and
the sitting opposite your father in the library, to say nothing about
his two daughters all about the house—ach, lieber Himmel!—these things
were good for a man.
You know that I was
always soft enough in the head, but now I think I have got softened all
over, not excepting the engine that drives the blood. I do not think I
have even thought a cross thought since I came home, and I only hope I
may always be able to keep up that decent frame of mind. You see I do
not mind what I say to you or your sister. You are one of the Sisters of
Charity, and I make my confession to you as I would to the Pope, honest
man, if I happened to be intimate with him, and liked him sufficiently.
I often think of that pleasant episode in my life which began when I
first went to Pumpsaint, and has lasted up till to-day. That to me is a
golden legend better than any that Caxton ever printed, for in spite of
a few clouds, so much of it has been full of air, light, and sunshine.
On the 26th July 1842 I first went to Pumpsaint, and there was no winter
at all that year, nor for several years after. And even now there is no
more of it than is perhaps good for one.
London, 24th April 1875.
My dear Geikie—Since
receiving yours of 21st I have been very busy. . . . Last night I
lectured at the Royal Institution on the Pre-Miocene Alps, and their
subsequent waste and degradation, to a good audience. It is a difficult
subject to make quite plain to a general audience, the figures are so
large; but though I was not quite satisfied with it myself, Sir Philip
Egerton and others seemed to think I made it clear.—Ever sincerely, Andw.
C. Ramsay.
London, 23rd July 1875.
My dear Mrs. Cookman— ...
As for me my life is rendered miserable by writing testimonials for men
trying for professorships in Australia, Japan, Aberyst-with, and Eton
the latter a mastership. 1 have had the nomination of a man to the
University in the capital of Japan, as Professor of Geology. T hen I am
driven wild by invitations for self and lady to all sorts of public
soirees—three for this very night, to only the quietest of which I will
go. However, I have made up my mind to dine with the Lord Mayor, and I
will take Louisa to the soiree of the Society of Arts.
I have had a letter
to-day from America, and the ' critter' encloses another sheet giving a
sketch of my life, and asking me to fill in some blanks and correct it
and send it back for publication 111 Applctoris American Cyclopedia! I
am laughing consumed!)'. — Ever affectionately, Andw. C. Ramsay.
During the summer and
autumn he was again busy in Wales, and from time to time he sent me
tidings of his doings. From his letters to me the following sentences
are taken.
'27th July.—There has
been no practicable weather till yesterday. It is fine now, and I start
for Merionethshire on Thursday. The book is not in. a state to make any
further progress till more work is done in the field. I had brought it
up to that point.
'12th August.—Here [Beaumaris]
and in Monmouthshire, Etheridge and I are hard at work. In the mountains
about Dolgell: I have Ward and Hebert, having shown them the sections
and the needful line to add to the map. I am not fit for daily high
mountain work on a large scale now.
'The case stands thus: We
have (1) Lingula Flags, (2) Tremadoc Slates, (3) Arenig beds, which in
my Memoir are called Lower Llandeilo or Arenig beds, above which in N.
Wales comes the Caradoc series, of which the old-fashioned Llandeilos of
Murchison may with propriety be considered a part. From the Tremadocs
into the Arenig beds there pass about ten or eleven species; from the
Arenigs into the ordinary Llandeilo and Caradoc beds eight species. I
hear that you have equivalents of the Arenigs in the S. of Scotland,
somewhere towards the Cambrian country. Can you give me any idea of
their real relations to any overlying Silurian strata, and underlying
strata, if any? . . . I have some evidence that the Arenigs of
Caernarvonshire have overlapped all below, and lie direct on the
Cambrians. It is in my Geology of N. Wales, but I think these Arenigs
are there called Llandeilos.
11th September. — I
scarcely think I have had enough of rest in the entire way. I am getting
on with my new edition in spite of too much correspondence, and I have
now got all the data except a scrap. The great Arenig and Lower
Llandeilo line is done and run out to sea at both ends. I think I would
almost rather write a new book than a new edition. Dovetailing is often
so troublesome. I think (or hope) that I shall soon get to the last
half, which may need but little alteration, except a few words here and
there. As it turns out, a good deal of my book will be almost rewritten.
It will be a great improvement on the last edition. In the Welsh
section, the trappy inter-stratifications are, of course, accidents, and
sometimes, as at Criccieth, they are absent.
'23rd December.—I am so
head and ears at present in the River Dee (Wales) that I think 1 have
got water on the brain. It is the most curious bit of physical history
of any river I have yet tackled. It will make a chapter of my Survey
Memoir on N. Wales; but I shall first send it to the Geological Society.
30th.— I have finished my Jolly Miller chapter [on the origin of the
River Dee]. The results rather astound myself about the extremely early
date of the river. It has been running so long that the Rhine is a baby
to it in age.'
He had on hand at this
time a number of geological memoirs bearing on his favourite topic of
the origin of the superficial contours of the land. The paper on 'How
Anglesey became an Island' was read before the Geological Society on the
19th January 1876, and that upon the River Dee upon the 26th April
following. Then he was busy during the winter partly on the new edition
of the Welsh Memoir, and partly on a revised and enlarged edition of his
little volume on The Physical Geology and Geography of Great Britain. He
still also fired an occasional shot in defence of his theory of the
glacial origin of lake-basins. We resume the extracts from his
correspondence.
On the 26th January 1876
he wrote to me: ' My Dee paper only went in [to the Geological Society]
last Saturday, and therefore is not likely to be read for a month or
two, in the time of the new President, Dr. Duncan, who assumes office on
the 19th February. Austen would not take it, and there is no doubt that
Duncan is the next best man. Evans's selection of him gives general
satisfaction.
'We are very deficient in
volcanic rocks in England and Wales, excepting those of Lower Silurian
date. These are all younger than the remadoc Slates, and begin in the
Arenig series (Lower Llandeilo of Murchison). If, as I have said, the
red Cambrian rocks are mostly fresh-water or estuarine deposits, that
may give some sign of an old valley; but in Wales there is a great
thickness of Lingula Flags and Tremadoc Slates between the Cambrian
strata and the volcanic series. ... I know all the New Red series of
England north of the Severn, and it contains no volcanic rocks. In Devon
it does, see De La Beche's Report on Devon and, Cornwall, chap, vii.,
where you will find something directly bearing on your question in re
valleys and volcanoes.
'We have no Liassic or
Oolitic volcanic rocks, and none in the Wealden, though that formation
must have been deposited at the mouth of a great river-valley. Neither
have we any Cretaceous or Eocene igneous rocks, though there is in these
formations evidence of the mouth of another big river-valley.
'The Eifel volcanoes are,
in general, on the top of a plateau, in which, however, there were
pre-Miocene valleys, if these volcanoes be Miocene. ... I think your
letter gives me a glimmering of what you are thinking about in the
matter of these old river-valleys and volcanoes, and the subject is
quite a new idea to me, and will be to others when you work it out.'
To Miss Johnes he wrote
on the 2nd March : ' I have pretty good news to tell of myself. This is
my last year of delivering lectures in the Royal School of Mines. This
will be a very considerable relief in point of work. As I had pay and
fees as a professor, they cut off that part of the salary given to Sir
Roderick, supposed to represent the Museum as distinct from the Survey.
Now they are to add /300 a year to the Survey salary for the Museum, and
cut off the Professorship salary, etc., and for that "crowning mercy" I
am very glad, and so is Louisa. The fear
Is that by and by, having
no occasion to lecture students, I may take to lecturing her instead.'
To Mrs. Cookman he
reported that he had given his farewell lecture on the 9th May, '
fifty-five minutes being devoted to a broad resume of geological
subjects, and eight or ten to taking farewell of the students, and of my
post of Professor of Geology. In that theatre I had lectured for quarter
of a century, to say nothing of three previous years at University
College. Glad as I am to stop, the severance cost the a sort of pang,
and for a moment at the beginning of the valedictory, I almost thought I
was going to break down—a tendency which my watchful wife observed, but
which probably no one else did. In point of fact, I bit my under-lip,
and swallowed something like a young potato in my throat. A sprinkling
of extra strangers came, and all my children were there to hear Papa's
last lecture.'
On the 22nd June he
formally sent in his resignation of the lectureship, and the task which
had once been so light and joyful, but which in these last years of
failing power had become an increasing burden, was now happily removed.
He told me that he would be financially a loser by the change, ' but the
relief will counterbalance that.
10th July 1876.
My dear Geiicie—On
Thursday I take my family to Beaumaris. Etheridge will join me by and by
to have a bout at the rocks of Lleyn (north horn of Cardigan Bay), where
I begin to believe I shall find the Arenig Slates lying directly on the
Cambrian, without the intervention of the Menevian, Lingula, and
Tremadoc beds, and involving a vast unconformity.
It is a most important
point in British Silurian geology, as I have long attempted to show, and
if I find this additional demonstration I shall be glad.
I shall be at work in
Wales, writing the Memoir, with some field-work, for a good while, how
long I know not. In September I go to Gibraltar for the Colonial Office
and the authorities at Gibraltar, with an assistant. All expenses for
both will be paid, and I asked nothing more, considering it a piece of
duty. It is in re water. Now I would like much it you could spare your
brother James to go with me. A few weeks will do it, for the surveying
will be brief.
In accordance with his
plan of work Ramsay this summer revisited many parts of the ground in
North Wales which Selwyn and he had surveyed so long before, and with
the assistance of some of h:s colleagues traced in the new boundaries.
It is interesting to notice among his notes of these journeys that over
tracts where formerly he had eyes only for the old rocks and their
structure, he now looked out eagerly everywhere for the tracks of
glaciers and ice-sheets, examined the rock-basins, and went carefully
over the exposures of drift.
Beaumaris, 10th August
1876.
My dear Geikie—We started
at eight yesterday morning, and had twelve hours on the Caernarvonshire
hills. We began by marching to the top of Moel Tryfaen to see the
Cambrians and the shell-beds of Trimmer, 1150 [correctly about 1400]
feet above the sea. These are undoubtedly true marine, beachy, false-bedde.d
sands and gravels, overlaid by good boulder-clay, and have been much
eroded before or during the deposition of the latter. It is a long
story. We saw much moraine matter en route up. There is no description
of that area in my Old Glaciers of North Wales, and no printed
description of Moel Tryfaen gives an account of all that we saw. I shall
write a note about it for the Geol. Soc., and also put it in my new
edition of North Wales, when I have digested it. In the meanwhile, I see
nothing in it adverse to my broader views in the Old Glaciers of North
Wales.
From Moel Tryfaen we
walked across moor and hill to Llanberis, that I might get a notion of
the great extension of the slate-quarries since I first mapped the
country some twenty-seven years ago. ... I reexamined the Cambrian rocks
at Bangor the other day, and found that the Arenig beds lie directly
upon them, without the intervention of the Tremadoc Slates and Lingula
Flags, as I have all along maintained. This is an important point for me
versus mere stratigraphico-palaontological men who delight in finding
errors in Survey views. I wish you could find Aromg beds directly on the
Cambrians in the West Highlands.
On the 14th September he
sailed for Gibraltar. With the assistance of his colleague, Mr. James
Geikie, he made a careful survey of the Rock and a portion of the
surrounding ground, steamed in a gunboat along the Spanish shores,
crossed to the opposite mainland, and sailed for fifty miles along the
African coast so as to get a bird's-eye view of the geology for purposes
of comparison with that of the northern side, spent three days in Africa
geologising and wandering among Moors, camels, and the picturesque but
odorous streets and suburbs of a Moorish town. He was back :n England on
the 30th October.
On his return he set to
work at once on the report of his examination of Gibraltar with
reference to the question submitted to him. But materials enough of a
more generally interesting geological character had been collected which
it seemed a pity to bury in the pages of a departmental blue book. The
fellow-travellers accordingly worked these materials up into a conjoint
paper, which in the spring of 1878 was read before the Geological
Society.
A pleasant incident
diversified Ramsay's London life during the winter of 1876-77. His
pupils at the School of Mines had raised among themselves and former
students about ^100, with which they purchased a set of three handsome
silver dessert pieces, half a dozen old Dutch parcel gilt spoons, and
some other table ornaments. These they presented to their much-esteemed
teacher as an expression of their gratitude and good-will for his
eminent services to the School, and for the benefit they had themselves
derived from his teaching and his influence.
How much his thoughts
turned to foreign lands and the geological questions there awaiting
solution is well shown in his correspondence at this time. Thus to Mrs.
Cookman he wrote: ' I have planned a route to San Remo in the hope of
going there to fetch you home; viz. that Louisa and I first go to
Mulhouse or Basle, and then find our way down the Sadne to Lyons, where
it joins the Rhone, then work up the RBne to Geneva, and back to Lyons,
and so down the remainder of the Rhone to Marseilles, with a possible
divertissement into Auvergne. There is something to find out about the
valleys of the Saone and Rhone that I know nothing about, and which I
think no one but myself has yet dreamed of. On the whole, I have always
been a pretty good hand at scientific dreaming, and I believe this dream
will come true, iif I can only find time to work it out.'
A heartrending tragedy
occurred during the autumn of 1876 in the family at Dolaucoth. The
butler shot Mr. Johnes, severely wounded Mrs. Cookman, and afterwards
committed suicide. As these were Ramsay's dearest friends, the event was
a crushing trial for him, and in some measure saddened all his later
life. His diary and his letters of this period afford touching proofs of
the tender affection and deep sympathy of his nature.
But the vortex of London
life swept him on. 'We are all well enough,' he wrote later in the year
to his Dolaucothi friends, 'and, as usual, occupied "with those
innumerable busynesses which take up so much of people's lives in
London, that anyth'ng like leisure becomes an unknown quantity. Of
course, I am at work on a book in scraps of time, and if it were only
finished I fancy I might breathe more freely, but I know that something
else is sure to succeed it. The Survey men both of Scotland and Ireland
are crying to me "Come," and go to both I must, some time this year.
' he invasion of
scientific foreigners has also set in with unusual severity at an
earlier season than usual. I invite them to dinner ; some of them cannot
come, and some do come, and then we have a Babel of languages. To add to
that, we have got a German housemaid who as yet speaks no English
' Since writing that last
word, dispatches have arrived from Nova Scotia requiring immediate atten
tion, the writer asking a letter from me, which, being shown, shall
stimulate the Governor of Newfoundland to see the importance of certain
work on the northeast coast of Labrador, whither my friend is being
despatched from Newfoundland the dreary. He is the man who told Louisa
that the worst dinner he ever had consisted of "cold eagle and
badger-sauce."
To the same friends, who
were now on the Riviera, he writes : ' I grieve to say there is no
chance of foreign travel for me this year. I must go to Ireland, and I
must go to Scotland, and I have irons in the fire that must be got out
and cooled, some of them, I hope, ere this year is much further
advanced. . . . All of those valleys opening into the Alps, from the
Dora Baltea to Como, have made a deep impression on me. I wish I could
see them again, and specially with you two and Louisa. Besides the
beauty, some curiously interesting points have come out since we were
there. It is now known that the great lakes of Como, Maggiore, etc.,
were at one time fjords, like those of Norway. When the mighty old
glaciers were busy scooping out my lake - hollows, the ends of them
descended into the sea, and deposited their moraines there, for
sea-shells are mingled with the material at the ends of the moraines.
Then as the glaciers retired, the lakes became fjords, and I hear that,
just as in the Swedish lakes, some marine species still inhabit the
waters of Maggiore. There is a geological infliction for you! I give it
you without remorse, for I know you to have a soul above buttons, unlike
me, when once I wandered out round a lonely lake at the Grimsel in
search of any kind of button, and found one of brass, by the margin on
an ice scratched rock.
The journeys of
inspection to Ireland and Scotland were duly made, and pictures of his
progress may be gathered from his correspondence.
Beaumaris, 9th September
1877.
My dear Geikie—I got back
on Thursday, after a month's stiffish work all about Ireland, from
Kilkenm and Galway up to Portrush and the Giant's Causeway, and so south
by Belfast back to Dublin. I have seen all the Miocene basalts in the
norih of Ireland, and from thence have had a view of Rathlin, Isla,
Jura, the Mull of Cantyre, Ailsa, Arran, the Ayrshire mountains by Loch
Doon, and a lot of small islands away north by Oban that I could not
name. As for glaciation in Ireland, by Glendalough Galway], etc. etc.,
good heavens !!! The sections at Glendalough and away north are the
Silurian rocks of N.W. Sutherland, etc., quartzites, limestones, and
all.
I shall be ready for the
Cumberland and south of Scotland comparison with you and your men, Peach
and Home, and with Aveline, Ward, and Bristow.
The conference with his
colleagues the northwest of England and the south of Scotland was the
last important conclave which Ramsay held in the field. The Directors
for England and Scotland, each with two of their respective staffs, met
him at Kendal, and the party journeyed through the more important
geological tracts. Those of the number who had not been out in the field
for some years with their chief saw with regret the marked failing in
his vigour. The old brightness and kindliness were there as fully as of
old. the merry laugh still rang out after the ready jest, and the lively
talk, with interesting reminiscence and literary allusion, still charmed
as they had always done ; but the elastic step, the eager endurance, the
sustained power of tracking the 'ntricacies of geological structure had
grown markedly feebler. I remember well the pang with which I realised
as we climbed a hill side above Derwent Water that my beloved friend,
whom from my boyhood I had looked up to with pride and affection as the
very embodiment of geological prowess, had now become an old man. He was
then not more than sixty-three years of age, but a life of physical and
mental toil and official worry had made him prematurely aged. At the end
of the day when we got back to our inn he would often look exceedingly
weary, and yet dinner would for the time revive him, and make him once
more what he used always to be, the gayest member of a Survey gathering.
I remember that on the
same occasion he showed how difficult it now was for him to keep pace
with the onward developments of his own science. The introduction of the
microscope as an adjunct to a field-geologist's equipment and the
microscopic study of thin slices of rocks for petrographical
determination had been recognised for some time by several members of
his staff as absolutely essential for accurate mapping in regions of
crystalline rocks. I had myself made use of the aid of the microscope
for twelve years before this time, and J. C. Ward had adopted the same
course in his study of the volcanic district of the Lakes. The party
having dined, Ward and I had retired to another room that we might
examine under the microscope some of his volcanic rocks, and compare
them with the Palaeozoic volcanic series of Scotland. We had been
engaged on this task for an hour or two when Ramsay joined us. He sat
rather impatiently watching us for a while, and then starting up, left
the room after exclaiming, 11 cannot see of what use these slides can be
to a field-man. I don't believe in looking at a mountain with a
microscope.'
While on the journey
through Scotland, he sent the following account of it to his friends at
Dolau-cothi: [From one of the windows of this coffee-room in Perth] I
can see the Tay, full-Hooded, rushing through the arches of that noble
bridge, which reminds me of the bridge across the Moselle at Treves,
only both river and bridge at Perth are more striking than those of
Treves. Of a verity there is no denying the fact that the Tay is the
finest river in Britain, with more water in it than even the Thames or
the Severn, and such a varied landscape to flow through, with hills and
cliffs, woods and swelling fields, all undula ing and brae-like, except
the noble haughs or meadows that here and there fo»*m the banks of the
river, and of which the Inches of Perth (once islands) form such
beautiful examples.
'I went to Keswick,
Cockermouth, Carlisle, Hawick, Melrose, Galashiels, Peebles, Edinburgh,
Leadhills, and Moffat, Dumfries, Kirkcudbright, Dumfries again and
Edinburgh, and so to Arbroath. Stonehaven, Blairgowrie, and Perth. There
is a catalogue for you, that beats Homer's catalogue of ships, or
Milton's catalogue of devils. I hope ere a fortnight elapses to be in
the bosom of my own family at Cromwell Crescent.'
Returning to London, he
was soon once again in the midst of his 'new edition' and other
multifarious preparations. His paper on the geology of Gibraltar was
read before the Geological Society on the 6th March 1878, and he gave a
Friday evening discourse on the subject on the 24th May, which was his
last appearance before the Royal Institution. The fifth edition of his
Physical Geology and Geography of Great Britain, on which he had been
engaged in intervals of leisure for several years past, was at length
published in May of this year.
For some time previous to
that at which this narrative has now arrived, Ramsay had suffered much
trouble from an affection of the left eye, brought on in the. first
instance by overwork in lamplight, and aggravated by a severe wetting at
the funeral of a brother-in-law. In the autumn of 1878 the ailment
became so serious that, to save the other eye, it was necessary to
remove the left one—an operation skilfully performed by his friend Mr.
Whitaker Hulke, and borne by Ramsay with his characteristic quiet
courage.
A month later he wrote to
his friends at Dolaucothi: 'I am well enough to be doing much as usual,
excepting that I do less work as yet. Then I have got a most lovely
glass eye. You are not to quote Shakespeare, "Get thee glass eyes, and,
like a scurvy politician, seem to see the things thou dost not."'
On the 16th June 1879 he
received a gratifying telegram from Sella at Rome, that he had been
elected a corresponding member of the Royal Academy of the Lincei, an
honour which he specially prized, not only because of the famous Society
which conferred it on him, but because it came as a mark of the kindly
esteem of his friend, the illustrious statesman and geologist of Italy.
In the early summer of
1880 he succeeded in taking a brief holiday in a part of Europe which he
had not before explored. Mrs. Ramsay and his second daughter had spent
the winter at Hyeres, and he met them on their way home at Aix les Bains.
The traces left by the vast ancient glacier of the Rhone, which once
overspread all that region, filled 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 exam-'nation 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 10th 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 presidential 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 discourse, the President
professed once more his geo logical faith as an uncompromising
Uniformitarian declaring that, from the period of the oldest known rocks
down to the present day, 'all the physical events in the history of the
earth have varied neither in kind nor in intensity from those of which
we now have experience.'
The discourse, though
printed, was not read by the speaker He had a few notes before him, to
which he made occasional reference as he passed from one division to
another. His lively inflections of voice, marked Scottish accent, and
energetic gestures as he enforced the successive points which he wished
the audience to comprehend were a novel and not unwelcome variation from
the more usual formality of the presidential address. In the proceedings
at the close reference was made to the fact that, though the President
was not a Welshman, he had done his best to atone for that defect by
marrying a Welshwoman. Ramsay in replying spoke of his love for Wales ;
he knew almost every mountain-top in the Principality, he said, having
either surveyed them with his own hands, or having superintended the
surveys of them by others.
Towards the end of the
year two marks of recognition of Ramsay's lifelong devotion to science
were received by him. At the Anniversary of the Royal Society on the 1st
December a Royal Medal was given to him 'for his long-continued and
successful labours in geology and physical geography.' A few days later
the University of Glasgow conferred on him the degree of LL.D.—thus
towards the close of his career linking him by a new tie with his native
town and the college with which he had so many pleasant early
associations.
The second edition of the
North Wales Memoir, which had involved so much labour both in the field
and at the desk, was at last published at the close of 1881. In bulk it
considerably exceeded the previous edition. A special interest attaches
to it because it was its author's last Survey publication. As the year
wore on it had become more and more evident that he must seek retirement
from the endless cares of official life. In the course of the summer he
made a round of farewell visits among his staff. I accompanied him
through some parts of the centre of Scotland. He particularly wished to
see some of the Highland lakes. So we made for Kenmore, and sailed up
Loch Tay, and then by Lochs Vennachar and Achray to Loch Katrine and
Loch Lomond. The scenery brought back early associations to him, and
mingled with these reminiscences came the new interest which such
scenery had for him in its bearing upon his doctrine of the glacial
origin of lake-basins, and at the same time the sadness that arose from
the feeling that he should probably never see these scenes again.
The British Association
held its jubilee this year at York, where it had opened its career fifty
years before. Ramsay, as the oldest surviving president of Section C,
was asked to take the chair of that section on this occasion. He did so,
and gave the address; but the effort was a great strain upon him, and he
returned to Beaumaris to rest. It was definitely arranged that he should
retire from his Government appointment at the end of the year.
To his old friend and
colleague, Mr. Howell, he wrote: 'I feel grateful for the regret that
our good fellows feel for my retirement. I regret it too very much, but
in the words of the old ballad, "Ira weary wi' hunting and fain would
lie down." I hope I may find contented rest in doing nothing but what I
choose to do. The change, however, will be very great, even though the
non-official intercourse should continue between us as fast as ever.
He announced to his
friends at Dolaucothi: 'On the 31st December I shall retire from the
public service, and whether or not there will be another
Director-General I do not know. Neither do I quite know how I shall
enjoy doing nothing but what I choose to do; but, on the whole, I think
I shall manage very well. They have given me the highest possible
pension, and that and our private incomes will enable us to live just as
we have been accustomed to do ever since I became Director-General. ...
I think that, on the whole, I have been a "fortunate youth." One thing
also pleases me, that I shall be able some time in 1882 to pay a visit
to Dolaucothi the beloved, and to lie upon a bank where the wild thyme
grows, and where oxlip and the nodding cowslip blows."
'My address to the
geological section of the British Association at York last summer
principally dealt with the progress of geology for the last fifty years.
In my mind there is no doubt that it is, or was, the last address I
shall ever give.
'The other day, as
Louisa, Fanny, Dora, and I had arrived at the pudding stage of dinner, a
franked letter arrived from Mr. Gladstone, informing me that at the
instance of Lord Spencer, who is my official chief, I am required on
Wednesday next to go down to Windsor by the 1.10 p.m. train in levde
costume, and from the station, along with others, am to be transported
to the castle to be knighted at three.'
On the afternoon of the
31st December Sir Andrew quitted his desk at the Jermyn Street Museum,
and closed his long and honourable career as a civil servant.
For upwards of forty
years he had given himself with his whole heart to the work of the
Geological Survey, and he carried with him into his retirement the
affectionate wishes of every member of the staff over which he had so
long and so ably presided. |
