370 REPORT — 1851. 



I have great pleasure in bearing testimony here to the general services of 

 Mr. Welsh, and particularly in making and recording, in the Diary, &c., 

 very numerous comparisons, observations, measurements, adjustments and 

 computations relative to the thermom.cters, the various hygrometers, the ba- 

 rometers and barometrograph, and tlie magnetographs*, in the laborious pro- 

 cesses of tabulating and tracing the magnetic curves, and in making and re- 

 cording all the observations and remarks entered in the form of the Electro- 

 meteorological Journal ; in suggesting a few alterations in that form, and in 

 the mode of deducing the value of electrical frequency (vide p. 355); in point- 

 ing out the former defective m.ode of suspending the mountain barometer, and 

 the first-mentioned inconvenience in the use of a Regnault hygrometer (vide 

 p. 365); in suggesting the use of screens to protect the magnets from the heat 

 of the lamps, and in assisting me to vary the older methods of ascertaining 

 the magnifying powers of tlie lenses of tlie magnetographs (vide p. 352). 



The calibrations and graduations of the new Standard Thermometers have 

 been executed by him. 



Ordnance Survey of Scotland. 



The Committee appointed at the Edinburgh Meeting in 1850, "for the 

 purpose of urging on Her Majesty's Government the completion of the Geo- 

 graphical Survey of Scotland, as recommended by the present Meeting of 

 the British Association at Edinburgh in ISS'l-,"' presented the following Me- 

 morial to the First Lord of the Treasury :— 



<( ]y[Y Lord " London, February I7th, 1851. 



" As constituting a committee appointed for that purpose by the British 

 Association for the Advancement of Science, we beg to call your Lordship's 

 attention, and that of Her Majesty's Government, to the untoward condition 

 and slow progress of the Geographical Survey of Scotland. 



"In the year 1834, when, for the first time assembled at Edinburgh, the 

 British Association prayed the Government of that day to accelerate mate- 

 rially the completion of a work, Avhich, notwithstanding that the primary 

 triangulation was commenced in 1809, had not produced in the intervening 

 25 years a single practical result. It was then shown, that the grossest errors 

 pervaded every known chart and map ; and although, thanks to the zeal of 

 the Hydrographer of the Navy and his surveyors, many of the chief head- 

 lands have since been laid down, the mass of the land still remains in the same 

 unsurveyed condition. 



" In fact, on returning to Edinburgh last summer, after an interval of 16 

 years, the British Association deeply regretted to learn that, excepting Wig- 

 tonshire, about a sixtieth part only of Scotland, no portion of the kingdom had 

 been mapped. 



" Permit us to remind your Lordship that, although in consequence of many 

 subsequent appeals from other public bodies (including the Royal Society 

 of Edinburgh and the Highland Society), the Government did at length, in 

 1840, direct the survey to be laid down on a scale of six inches to a mile, or 

 similar to that of the Irish survey, so feeble and inadequate has been the 

 force employed, that in judging from what has transpired since that date, 



* Which comparisons, &c. are fai- too numerous and complex for insertion in a summary 

 of this kind. 



