208 Proceedings of the Wernerian Society. 



burgh, and the Highland and Agricultural Society, suggesting the 

 importance of co-operation on the part of the principal scientific 

 associations, and especially of these societies, in an application to 

 Government for the resumption of the trigonometrical survey of 

 Scotland. Mr Torrie, assistant-secretary, read the first part of 

 Captain Mackenzie's account of his overland jouniey from India. 

 Mr Smith of Jordanhill read an account of some extraordinary 

 optical phenomena depending on atmospheric refraction, observ- 

 ed in the counties of Ayr and Stirling. Mr Macgillivray then 

 read a paper on the geological relations, and animal and vegetable 

 productions, of the Cromarty Frith, with observations relative to 

 the estuaries and sea-lochs of Scotland. 



22d April. — The following Memorial, prepared by the Council 

 and Messrs Smith of Jordanhill and J. Stewart Menteath, jun. of 

 Closeburn, was read and approved of. 



Unto the Right Honourable the Lords Commissioners of His Majesty's 

 Treasury, the Humble Memorial of the President and Members of 

 the Wernerian Natural History Society of Edinburgh ; 



Sheweth, 



That while your Memorialists view, with the utmost satisfaction, the pro- 

 gress which has been made in the noble Ordnance Surveys of England and 

 Ireland, and are fully alive to the immense advantages which those parts of 

 the Empire are already deriving from the admirable Trigonometrical opera- 

 tions by which their physical geography has been defined, your Memorialists 

 beg leave humbly, and most respectfully, to urge upon your Lordships' atten- 

 tion the very defective state of the best existing Maps and Charts of Scotland, 

 and to suggest to your Lordships the propriety of directing the resumption 

 of the Triangulation, and completion of the Trigonometrical Survey, of Scot- 

 land, which has been so long and unaccountably suspended, after it had been 

 auspiciously commenced. 



The errors in Arrowsmith's Map of Scotland, wliich has the reputation of 

 being the best we possess, are so numerous and important as to render the 

 construction of a Geological Map of the country, on which dependence can 

 be placed, an impracticable undertaking; while its erroneous positions of our 

 Coasts and Islands present the most formidable obstacles to navigation. 

 The form and position of headlands, and even of considerable islands, in this 

 map, and in our best charts, are erroneously given ; and sometimes dangerous 

 rocks and whole islands are totally omitted. For example, your Memorialists 

 beg leave to call your Lordships' attention to the following facts. The dis- 

 tant rocks of the Stack a.nA. the Skerry, off the northern coast of Sutherland- 

 shire, as well as the Island of St Kilda, are totally omitted in Arrowsmith's 

 Map, while the important Islands of Barra and llona are misplaced, both in 

 latitude and longitude. In some charts the large Island of Ai'ran is laid down 

 as 6 miles from Bute ; in others as 9 miles, and in a thiwi as 12 miles distant 



