4 ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 



Professor Pritchett has asked that a certain definite piece of work 

 be taken up. We are all of one accord that wliat is required of us is a 

 most important work, and one which Canada cannot afford to overlook. 

 But is even this going far enough ? Is it not a fact that the work 

 demanded is one which should form a part of a general scheme for a 

 geodetic survey of the country, and as such become the work of an 

 organization, which has as yet no existence here ? 



I fear the possibility, that in bringing forward thfs larger scheme 

 I may, by some, be looked upon as in a measure throwing cold water 

 upon the proposal which was more immediately specified, namely, that 

 of extending the arc of the 98th meridian northwards through Canada. 

 Such is, in fact, very far from my intention. It may be contended that 

 we should work from the smaller to the greater. It is well remembered 

 that the Ordnance Survey of Great Britain sprang from the project, 

 undertaken in 1784, of connecting, by triangulation, the Greenwich 

 and Paris observatories ; and that the Coast and Geodetic Survey itself 

 had its beginning in small things. But we are not now, scientifically, 

 in the position of England and France a century ago. We have the 

 ripe experience of other countries to guide us. 



When we consider this matter in the light of what is actually taking 

 place about us, it will be seen that there is a great and urgent demand 

 for an organization which will render of permanent value the various 

 detailed surveys which are being prosecuted in connection with the 

 several departments of the government. We find at least five such 

 separate and detached surveys in progress. Not only is there no frame- 

 work upon which to unite these several systems, but also — and I do not 

 Bay it in any spirit of criticism — there is not, for the greater part, a 

 Bullicient basis upon which to tie in the several portions of any one 

 survey. While the detail work of these various surveys is no doubt 

 excellent for the immediate purposes in view, they are, notwithstanding 

 this, disjointed, not only as regards one another, but as concerns the 

 several parts of the individual surveys. That this is so, is no discredit 

 to any one concerned in the work ; it cannot, under the existing order of 

 things, be otherwise. Further, and what is, perhaps, from a utilitarian 

 point of view much more important, the information obtained by these 

 topographical surveys is, in the absence of a thoroughly conducted and 

 well referenced trigonometrical survey, largely ephemeral. While the 

 immediate object is gained for the time being, the information in a large 

 measure ceases, through lapse of time, to be of permanent value. 



While the organization and equipment of a Geodetic survey might 

 at the outset entail a somewhat heavy expenditure, such a department 



