316 DIRECTOR-GENERAL OF THE SURVEY CHAP, x 



Survey correspondence is thus necessarily large and 

 constant. The Director-General is, further, the official 

 channel of communication with his own and with other 

 departments of Government, as well as with the 

 general public. Endless are the applications he 

 receives for information or advice on geological 

 questions. At one moment he is asked for assistance 

 in supplying an arsenal or fort with water ; at 

 another he is requested to inform a government board 

 where a prison or a workhouse had best be placed. 

 One Colonial government inquires of him whether in 

 his opinion water is likely to be obtained at a particular 

 spot which he may never have seen or heard of. Another 

 sends home a box of earth and stones with a request 

 to know whether the material affords hopeful indica- 

 tions of gold. A landed proprietor in England asks 

 him why no coal has been found on his estate, another 

 forwards a parcel of * specimens,' and wishes to know 

 what useful minerals he may look for in the places 

 from which they were taken. A third sends a so-called 

 'fossil,' dug up on the estate, in the belief that it is 

 some unique treasure, when it proves to be merely a 

 lump of inorganic concretion. In numberless questions 

 of drainage, road-making, railway-engineering, water- 

 supply, choosing sites for buildings, and other matters 

 where a knowledge of geology has a practical bearing, 

 applications are continually made to the Geological 

 Survey for assistance. It may readily be believed 

 that the Director-General is thus involved in a large 

 amount of extraneous business, besides that which 

 more properly arises from his ordinary official duties. 



The quantity of letter-writing which now fell upon 

 Ramsay, whether by his own hand or by that of a 

 secretary, was often so large that it left him hardly time 



