After their marriage, Professor Ramsay and his bride, Miss Louisa Williams, a Welsh lady, took a wedding tour through Switzerland, and Professor Ramsay got his first view of a real glacier far away toward the summit of the Uri Roth Stock," while crossing the Lake of the Pour Cantons, and observed the enormous contortions of the rocks of the region. He made also a special excursion to the Upper Aar Glacier. These experiences "quickened his desire to renew the study of the Welsh phenomena, and sent him back with a far more vivid conception of what the conditions must have been in the Ice age among the hills and valleys of this country." He "threw himself more and more into the study of the superficial contours of the land, and among the various agents by which these contours had been molded and modified he specially devoted himself to the investigation of the work of ice"; and among those who led the way to a more comprehensive investigation of these phenomena, "and who made the Glacial period one of the most absorbingly interesting of all the geological ages, a foremost place must always be assigned to Sir Andrew Ramsay."
The Government School of Mines, and of Science applied to the Arts, having been established on the removal of the Geological Museum to new quarters in 1851, Professor Ramsay was appointed lecturer on geology and its practical applications. This compelled his resignation of the professorship in University College. Besides the course of thirty lectures given twice a week, he delivered his courses in the system of evening lectures to artisans in which all the teachers engaged, giving six lectures each in the season, and which have been up to the present time eminently popular among the class for which they are designed. Professor Ramsay's first course, on the Utility of Geological Maps, was so acceptable that its repetition was called for. Among the results of the impulse given to the recognition of the importance of science in national progress that followed the Great Exhibition of 1851, was the establishment of the Department of Science and Art, under the control of the Board of Trade and afterward of the Privy Council, to which the Geological Survey, the Museum of Practical Geology, and the School of Mines were transferred. It was also decided to extend the Geological Survey to Scotland, and Professor Ramsay was sent there in 1853 to arrange for its operations, which were begun under his immediate direction in the summer of 1854. The onerous duty, which nobody was so competent as he to perform, of preparing, from his surveys, a connected description of the geology of North Wales, was undertaken, and became his chief indoor labor for twelve years. The chief of the survey. Sir Henry de la Beche, died in April, 1855. Professor Ramsay had been led by Sir Henry to suppose
