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amounted for the year 1851 to 24,000,0001., it will be admitted that 
the time had arrived for the erection of a building in some degree 
proportionate to the position occupied by this country in mining 
enterprise. 
_ ‘The next step was the establishment of a school of mines. Although 
in 1851 the mineral produce of this country was calculated at four- 
ninths of that derived from all Europe, no school having for its object 
the instruction of persons engaged in mining operations had been 
ostablished up to that year in the United Kingdom. In this respect 
other countries had been in advance of ours. France, Russia, Prussia, 
Saxony, Austria, Spain, Sweden, Denmark, and others even less con- 
nected with mining industry, were furnished with schools of mining 
by their respective governments. The consequence was, that in the 
theoretical branches of mining we were often far behind. In many 
quarters there existed a prejudice against the application of science to 
mining, as though theory and practice were necessarily opposed to 
each other; and young men who wished to acquire the former as well 
as the latter, were obliged to go to the schools at Freiburg and else- 
where, in order to be instructed in the rudiments of their profession. 
A committee of the House of Lords at length reported (1849) in favour 
of the establishment of a Government school of mines, and the Museum 
of Practical Geology was fixed upon as the proper centre for its opera- 
tions. The inauguration took place in 1851, and along with the 
Geological Survey, the school was placed under the direction of Sir 
H. De la Beche. The edifice was thus complete in all its details, 
but he who was the master-builder did not long survive to see the 
fruits of his labours. A premature decay of his physical powers set 
in, and he died in 1858, regretted alike by the scientific world and by 
his own immediate friends, and leaving the department over which he 
presided to the care of its present director-general, Sir R. I. Mur- 
chison. 
The progress of the Geological Survey has been, on the whole, 
from the south and west of England towards the north and east, or 
from the older to the newer formations. The first maps completed 
were those of Cornwall and Devon; these in all probability will 
require a fresh survey, owing to the advance of the science of geology 
within the last quarter of a century, and the greater attention to minutiz 
which has been introduced into the works of the survey, as evinced 
by the tracing of several subdivisions in the New Red Sandstone and 
Millstone grit formations of the central counties. In South Wales the 
Survey had the advantage of the labours of Sir William Logan, now 
director of the Geological Survey of Canada, who had, previous to the 
year 1840, collected a vast amount of information relating to the 
South Wales coal-field, which, together with the maps and sections 
he had constructed, he placed at the disposal of the director-general. 
This vast tract of Carboniferous rocks, embracing portions of several 
counties, rising into lofty table-lands, and penetrated by valleys of 
unusual depth, is one of the marvels of our country. Having an area 
of 900 square miles, and with seams of coal descending to depths of 
several thousand fect, there can be no doubt regarding the almost 
