1864.] BRITISH ASSOCIATION. 153 



the cause of geography ; but with little or no effect as regarded 

 the North of England, and my native country, Scotland. In the 

 twenty-nine years which have elapsed between the period when 

 the question was first agitated at Edinburgh, considerable progress 

 has, doubtless, been made ; but it is surely a reproach to a power- 

 ful country like Britain that in thirty years we have only just 

 seen the region between the Trent and the Tyne delineated and 

 laid down on a real map, — i. e., on the one-inch scale, — whilst 

 even yet the maps of the northernmost English counties are un- 

 finished. With the extension of the survey to the North of Eng- 

 land and Scotland, not only has the six-inch scale been adopted, 

 but much larger cadastral plans, on the 25^-inch scale, have been 

 and are in execution. While these plans are, I grant, most valu- 

 able to individual proprietors, they are beside the purposes of the 

 geographer — inasmuch as they exhibit no attempt whatever at the 

 delineation of physical features. Hence I regret that their execu- 

 tion should have been preferred to the completion, in the first in- 

 stance, of an intelligible and useful map of the British Isles, which, 

 if made to depend on the previous completion of the large-scale 

 plans, will still involve, I fear, the lapse of another very long- 

 period before the whole country will possess what geographers 

 consider a map. The most powerful cause which has retarded 

 the progress of good cartography has been the frequently-recurring 

 cold fits of indifferenc3 and consequent cutting off of the supplies 

 by which our legislature has been periodically affected, and which 

 have necessarily occasioned a collapse and stagnation in the works 

 of this important survey. As respects my own special department, 

 or the " Geological Survey," I deprecate still more strongly the 

 delay of the construction of the one-inch map, seeing that no 

 geologist can labor in the Highlands of Scotland, and accurately 

 delineate their interesting rock-formations, by coloring any of 

 the d:ifective country-maps of that region. Let us now cast a 

 rapid glance over the progress of discovery in distant lands, and 

 particularly where our countrymen have signalized themselves. 

 At former meetings of this Association, we have dwelt on the early 

 discoveries of new lands in the interior of Australia, in which the 

 names of Mitchell, Eyre, Sturt, Leichhardt, and others have been 

 always mentioned with honor and respect. The latter journeys 

 of the brothers Augustus and Frank Gregory have earned for these 

 good surveyors the highest honors of the Royal Geographiccl 



