1864. | Geology and Palcontology. 681 
unbounded resources of its minerals, which well deserve all the labour 
that may be required for their elucidation. Professor Ramsay, in his 
inaugural address at the School of Mines in 1857, states that after the 
publication of the maps of that country, landowners, colliery pro- 
prietors, coal viewers, and mining engineers all acknowledged their 
importance, and that a gentleman well versed in mining and scientific 
geology observed to him, “that the publication of the Government 
maps had placed them” (the colliery proprietors of South Wales) 
“thirty years in advance of what they were before.” 
The disentanglement of the geological intricacies of North Wales 
was a work requiring a more than ordinary amount of skill and perse- 
verance. In many places the slaty rocks and grits are repeatedly broken 
by faults, traversed by dykes of igneous rocks, or metamorphosed by 
enormous protrusions of trap, or old sub-marine lava-flows. To trace 
out on the small one-inch maps of the Ordnance Survey each particular 
dyke, band of slate, or bed of limestone, amongst wild tracts of moor- 
land or precipitous ranges of mountains, with few objects to guide the 
surveyor in determining his position, and often obliged to carry on 
his work amidst seething mists or pitiless storms, at other times 
puzzled to determine the very nature of a rock in regions where the 
characters and aspects of the formations are as changeable as the 
colour of the sky overhead, and when the whole structure of the beds 
is suddenly disarranged and thrown into disorder by the occurrence of 
a fault or dyke,—out of all this chaos to evoke order and system, 
and in spite of all obstacles to produce the geological maps which are 
now in the hands of the public,—was a work which we venture to think 
has never yet been fully appreciated except by the very few field- 
geologists who have made attempts at similar undertakings. It cannot, 
however, be otherwise than gratifying to those gentlemen who have 
been engaged in the survey of this and other parts of the kingdom, to 
find one of the most influential newspapers in the North of England 
recognizing the merits of the survey in a leading article, in such 
language as the following :—‘“ The manner in which this geological 
‘picture of the kingdom has been executed, commands the admiration 
of all competent judges. At the Paris Exhibition of 1855, the map, 
as far as it was then completed, was admitted by the geologists and 
miners from all parts of Europe who flocked thither, to be the finest 
work of the kind yet achieved, and elicited general praise for its de- 
tailed truth and precision in the delineation of those dislocations of 
the crust of the earth, the tracing out of which is so laborious, and 
can be accomplished only by men.of profound science.”* 
The survey of the Midland and Western counties of England has 
been completed, embracing several of the most important coal-fields, 
and those tracts of the newer formations under which the coal is con- 
sidered to be hid, and which may be regarded as reserves of mineral 
fuel kept in store for the use of future generations. It is hoped that 
the labours of the survey will throw light on the question of the posi- 
tion and depth of the beds of coal under the Triassic and Permian 
* “Manchester Guardian,’ 27th July, 1864. 
