414 Sir Roderick L Murchisori's 



for excellence, is provided for those who desire to become mining, 

 metallurgical, and geological associates of the school, every stu- 

 dent who attends a single course of lectures may by the new rules 

 compete iu the final examination for the prizes which attach to it 

 only. 



" Throughout the whole period of the existence of the school 

 the professors have given annual courses of evening lectures to 

 working men, which are always fully attended, as a part of their 

 regular duty; and during the past year several of them have 

 delivered voluntarily courses of evening lectures, at a fee so small 

 as to put them within the reach of working men, pupil-teachers, 

 and schoolmasters of primary schools. The professors thus hope 

 to support to the utmost the great impulse towards the diffusion 

 of a knowledge of physical science through all classes of the 

 community which has been given through the Department of 

 Science and Art by the Minute of the Committee of Privy Council 

 of the 2d of June, 1859. 



" A body like the British Association for the Advancement of 

 Science should, I conceive, not be unaware of a step of such vast 

 importance, and tending so entirely towards the same goal as that 

 to which its own efforts have been and stillare constantly directed. 



" Now, inasmuch as I can trace no record of the teachings of 

 the Government School of Mines in the volumes of the British 

 Association, and as I am convinced that the establishment only 

 requires to be more widely known, in order to extend sound phy- 

 sical knowledge not merely to miners and geologists, but also to 

 chemists, metallurgists, and naturalists, I have only to remind my 

 audience that this School of Mines which, owing its origin to Sir 

 Henry De la Beche, has furnished our colonies with some of the 

 most accomplished geological and mining surveyors, and many a 

 manufacturer at home with good chemists and metallurgists, has 

 now for its lecturers men of such eminence that the names of 

 Hoffman, Percy, Warington Smyth, Willis, Ramsay, Huxley, and 

 Tyndall are alone an earnest of our future success. 



" In terminating these few allusions to the Geological Survey 

 and its applications, I gladly seize the opportunity of recording 

 that in the days of our founder. Sir Henry de la Beche, our insti- 

 tution was greatly benefited in possessing, for some years, as one 

 of its leading surveyors, such an accomplished naturalist and skil- 

 ful geologist, as the beloved Assistant General Secretary of the 



