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of the great deposits of nickel at Sudbury, of asbestos in Quebec, of 

 coal in Nova Scotia, or the North-West, or the mode of occurrence and 

 geol tgical horizon of apatite or any other mineral of great economic 

 value, in which the weKare of large portions of the country is involved ; 

 or on the other hand the conducting of certain lines of assays where the 

 fullest and m^st reliable tests should be made for the common good, 

 such as the assays of gold bearing rocks or of silver bearing veins from 

 certain areas not yet entirely passed out of the public domain. To 

 those of you who have examined the great collections in the Geological 

 Museum the wonderful variety of our mineral resources from every 

 province of the Dominion must have been matter for astonishment, yet 

 in very many cases these great stores of mineral wealth are even yet 

 lying idle and undeveloped, owing to lack of capital or enterprise on 

 the part of our investors. 



Were the immense territorial extent of Canada which has been 

 traversed in the collecting of the-:e representatives of our economic 

 mineral resources, often at large expense and with much labour, as 

 easily accessible as the countries of Great Britain, P>ance or Germany, 

 the work of the geologist, botinist and naturalist would be a compara- 

 tivfly easy matter. I say comparatively easy, for while the intricate 

 problems of structure would yet remain to be solved by the geologist, 

 the facilities presented for their solution would be so great that much 

 of the hardship and uncertainty which now prevail in the examination 

 of a new and unsettled country would be done away with. 



In the absence of such aids, however, to geological exploration, 

 and in fact very often without any aids at all in the shape of maps, 

 even over many portions of the older provinces, much of the time of 

 the geologist in charge must now be devoted to deciphering his path 

 through the tangled wilderness, and in getting together sufficient 

 materials as regards topography as will enable him to place on paper 

 and to render intelligible the scieniific observations, geological or 

 otherwise, which it is his peculiar province to obtain; for it can be 

 readily understood by anyone, even but slightly conversant with the 

 subject, that to attempt to delinea::e the geology or structure of any 

 country on a projection, without the topographical features of river, lake 

 or mountain, is almost a hopeljas task. Thus it comes about that, 



