1841 EARL Y PROGRESS OF SUR VE Y 39 



publications were regarded at the time by English 

 geologists may be gathered from the encomium pro- 

 nounced on them by Buckland as President of the 

 Geological Society in the spring of 1840. 



The first map which I shall mention affords another example of 

 the recognition by Government of the importance of our subject 

 by their having attached a geological department to the Ordnance 

 Survey of England and Wales. The first-fruits of this appointment 

 are the splendid maps of Devon and Cornwall and a part of 

 Somerset, coloured after the surveys of Mr. De la Beche; and it 

 may truly be said of them that they are more beautiful in their 

 execution, more accurate in their details, and more instructive in the 

 economical and scientific information they give respecting mines 

 than any maps yet published by any Government in the world ; 

 affording documents to which we can at length with pride appeal, 

 in reply to the reproach that has so long, with too much truth, been 

 cast upon us, that England alone, of all the civilised nations, has 

 abandoned to gratuitous individual exertions, and the liberality of 

 amateurs in science, the great work of exploring and delineating the 

 mineral structure of the country, and ascertaining the nature and 

 extent of the subterranean produce which lies at the foundation of 

 the industry of its manufacturing population, and to which the nation 

 owes no small portion of its wealth. 1 



The rapidity with which these maps were prepared 

 by so small a staff would have been impossible had 

 the ground been surveyed in the same minute detail 

 as is now practised. In fact, admirable as they were 

 in many ways, and far as they were in advance of any- 

 thing of the kind previously attempted, they can be 

 regarded as little more than sketch-maps, giving a 

 first general outline of the geological structure of the 

 ground. They ought not to be judged by the higher 

 standard of intricate detail subsequently developed in 

 the work of the Survey. In later years, had Ramsay 

 been free to act as he pleased in the matter, he would 

 have had all these early maps resurveyed. 



Having so successfully launched his scheme for a 



1 Proc. Geol. Soc. iii. p. 221. 



