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staffand of various explorers from the other departments have been carried 

 on for nearly fifty years, as well as of hundreds of private parties, will 

 cease to be matter for astonishment when we consider the enormous 

 extent of our territory and the limited force available to carry on such 

 work. Even in the older provinces of Quebec and Ontario, where 

 these operations have been carried on most continuously, the great 

 succession of mountain country to the north of the St. Lawrence and 

 Ottawa, constituting the height of land between these rivers and those 

 of Hudson and James Bays, is to a large extent comparatively 

 unknown. True, sections have been made across this country here and 

 there along the various water courses but these only afford us a know- 

 ledge of our mineral wealth over limited areas. Exploration under 

 such conditions is necessarily slow and great areas must remain practi- 

 cally unknown until greater facilities of transport are presented, an 

 instance of which is presented in the discovery of the mining district of 

 Sudbury, within a short distance of Ottawa, a discovery due to the 

 openmg up of the country by the Canadian Pacific Railway, and in 

 Quebec also in the discovery ot the asbestos mines of the eastern town- 

 ships, in a section opened up by the passage of the Quebec Central 

 Railway, the localities in both cases being practically inaccessible prior 

 to the building of these roads. It is not yet twenty years since the 

 importance of the phosphate mines of the Buckingham district was 

 ascertained. \\^hen such wonderful stores of mineral wealth at our 

 very doors have so recently been brought to light, who can say what 

 further enormous developments may be looked lor in the extension of 

 those mineral bearing rocks which have so enormous a development in 

 our country, and which owing very often to present difTiciiUy of access 

 are entirely unknown. Thus if we contemplate the situation ever so 

 briefly we find before us a problem pertaining to the development of 

 our country and its niincal wealth which requires clear heads tor its 

 inception and brave hearts and strong hands for its successful accom- 

 plishment. In the elucidation ot this problem it is needless to say the 

 staff of the Geological Survey, in making known to the world at large 

 the mineral and agricultural resources of our land, has performed and 

 must continue to perform no unimportant part. With the utmost 

 cheerfulness, in the simple discharge of their duty, the members of that 



