54. Ramsay, Andrew Crombie, Sir (1814-1891) 

The Old Glaciers of Switzerland and North Wales.  London: Longman, Green, Longman, and Roberts, 1860.

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The back side of a roche moutonnée, with a perched rock and striations on top, from Andrew Ramsay, The Old Glaciers of Switzerland and North Wales, 1860.

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The Pass of Llanberis in Wales, as it appears today, from Andrew Ramsay, The Old Glaciers of Switzerland and North Wales, 1860.

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The Pass of Llanberis in Wales, as it might have appeared when filled with a glacier, from Andrew Ramsay, The Old Glaciers of Switzerland and North Wales, 1860.

Ramsay was a Scottish geologist for worked for the British Geological Survey in Wales.  Although in the 1840s he believed that Wales had been sculpted by invasions of the sea, in the late 1850s he became a prominent convert to the glacial theory. 

He found throughout Wales the unmistakable signs of glacial presence, including erratic blocks, moraines, perched rock, and roches moutonĂ©es, a French term for  rocks that have been scoured on three sides by a glacier that passes over them, leaving the fourth (back) side unabraded.

Ramsay became the second person to depict a prehistoric Ice Age, when he presented first a woodcut image of the pass of Llanberis as it now appears, and then, at the end of the book, offered a second image, depicting what the pass must have looked like when it was being sculpted by a glacier.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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