From A. C. Ramsay   13 December 1862

London

13 Decr 1862

My dear Sir

By this post I send you the 3d edition of our Catalogue of rocks. It is a kind of manual.1

I have read Jamiesons paper on the Parallel Roads.2 It is to be read at the Society January 21st. It is excellent & not long. Might I venture to refer it to you.3 It would give you very little trouble, I am sure. If you would rather not have it I must refer it to someone else less able to judge of its merits.

In the Catalogue I now send, you may possibly be interested in the passages p 1 to 3, bottom of p 13 & p 14, p 19 also top 12 of p 21,4 and the bottom of page 185 where you will find a remarkable quotation from the writings of old Peter Merian of Basle on the subject of fracture & regelation of glacier ice, though not in these express terms.5

Ever truly | Andw C Ramsay

1
Ramsay refers to a catalogue of the rock specimens in the Museum of Practical Geology, Jermyn Street, London (Ramsay et al. 1862). Ramsay was on the staff of the Geological Survey of Great Britain and was lecturer in geology at the Government School of Mines, both of which were part of the Jermyn Street establishment (Geikie ed. 1895). The catalogue was intended as the first in a series of publications ‘to illustrate the several branches of science which are taught in the Government School of Mines’ (Ramsay et al. 1862, p. ii); in his introduction Ramsay explained how the collections had been arranged for didactic purposes.
2
Jamieson 1863. See n. 3, below.
3
Ramsay was president of the Geological Society; in his letter to Ramsay of 14 December [1862], CD agreed to referee Jamieson 1863 for publication in the Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society of London. In his paper, Thomas Francis Jamieson offered an explanation for the series of parallel terraces on the sides of Glen Roy in Lochaber, Scotland, contradicting that given by CD in his 1839 paper, ‘Parallel roads of Glen Roy’. CD had fully accepted Jamieson’s explanation (see letter to A. C. Ramsay, 5 September [1862]).
4
Ramsay refers to a number of passages relating to the origin of metamorphic rocks, and, in particular, to the phenomenon of cleavage. He cited a suggestion of CD’s from South America, based on his observations in the Andes, that “foliation may be the extreme result of the process of which cleavage is the first effect;” or, in other words, that the process of re-arrangement of particles in the rocks began with cleavage, and ended in their entire crystalline re-arrangement in the same lines, thus producing foliation. Ramsay, on the contrary, held that there was no ‘necessary connection betwen cleavage and foliation.’
5
Ramsay et al. 1862, pp. 185–6. The reference is to Merian 1843, p. 156. Ramsay noted that Peter Merian’s theory that glaciers moved by repeated fracturing, followed by rapid regelation under pressure, was similar to that recently proposed by the physicist John Tyndall.

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-3857,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-3857