Geikie gives a list of eighty-one books and papers published by him, forty-six maps, and twenty sectional drawings embodying results of his surveys—that we can rightly estimate the extent of Sir Andrew Ramsay's influence in promoting the advance of geology. For nearly thirty years he was a teacher of geology, and "year by year," Sir Archibald Geikie says, "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 workingmen, 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." Much of his work was published only in this way, or in informal remarks to the Geological Society, when in the excitement 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." Another form of instruction, less palpable, but equally valuable, was the practical training he gave the men of his staff in the Geological Survey. "Never was there a more delightful field instructor than he. Full of enthusiasm for the work, quick of eye to detect fragments of evidence. . . . he carried the beginner on with him, and imbued him with some share of his own ardent and buoyant nature. . . . He would take infinite pains to make any method of procedure clear, and was long-suffering and tender where he saw that the difficulties of the learner arose from no want of earnest effort to comprehend. . . . If a man had any geological faculty in him, it was impossible that it should not be stimulated and educated under such a teacher." He had a singular gift of conversation, "which enabled him to draw out of a man who had any special knowledge to impart such information as served to elucidate geological questions."
Professor Ramsay records in his diary that in 1843 he refused the Geological Survey of India; in 1859 he began to write popular geological articles for the Saturday Review, which he continued to contribute for several years; in 1862 he received from the King of Italy the order of Saints Maurice and Lazarus in recognition of his scientific attainments and of his services to Italian officers sent at various times to England on missions of scientific inquiry; in 1866 he received the Neill prize from the Royal Society of Edinburgh; in 1871 he received the Wollaston medal from the Geological Society; in 1879 he was elected a corresponding member of the Royal Academy of the Lincei, Italy; in 1880 he was awarded a royal medal by the Royal Society "for his long-continued and successful labors in geology and physical geography;" and he received the degree of LL. D. from the University of Edinburgh.
