128 REPORT—1863. 
leading geographical results in British Geography which have been brought about 
since we last met here. At that time four years had elapsed since (at our first 
Meeting in Scotland) I directed the attention of this Association to the untoward 
condition of the Topographical Survey of the British Isles, by showing that no map 
of any country north of the Trent was in existence; in short, that all the North of 
England and the whole of Scotland were in that lamentable state; whilst the 
survey of France, and of nearly all the States of Germany, had been completed. 
Having roused public sentiment to this neglected state of the national map—so 
neglected, indeed, that one of the great headlands (Cape Wrath) was known to 
have been laid down some miles out of its proper place in all maps and charts— 
deputations to the Government followed, in the first of which I pleaded the cause 
of Geography, but with little or no effect as regarded the North of England and 
my native country, Scotland. Ireland then absorbed nearly all the labours of the 
Ordnance Survey, and was at length furnished with a map on the six-inch scale, 
from which the really useful general map on the one-inch scale has since been con- 
structing, but is not yet completed. 
In the twenty-nine years which have elapsed since the period when the question 
was first agitated, at Edinburgh, considerable progress has doubtless been made; 
but it is surely a reproach to a powerful country like Britain that in thirty years 
we have only just seen the region between the Trent and the Tyne delineated and 
laid down on a real map, 7. ¢., on the one-inch scale ; whilst even yet the maps of 
the northernmost English counties are unfinished. 
In making this observation, I am well aware that the skilful officer, Colonel Sir 
Henry James, who now directs the Survey, has made every exertion to complete 
this national object, and has shown great talent in its management. The tardy 
execution of the work has been due to two causes. The first of these was the 
deviation from the origina] plan of operations, which I greatly regretted, and from 
which on various pancioien have entered my humble dissent. The construction 
of a General Map of Great Britain, on the scale of one inch to the mile, was in 
rapid progress some thirty years back; and had this been followed out to its com- 
pletion, in the first instance, without applying the Survey forces to other and more 
detailed objects, not merely England, but the whole of the British Isles would 
have been completely mapped many years ago, and upon a scale larger than that 
used in the general map of any other country; in fact, upon the largest scale to 
which the term “ map” can be applied, or which can really serve some of the most 
essential purposes. The first deviation from the early plan took place in Ireland, 
where, in order to settle disputes relating to property between townlands, the six- 
inch scale was introduced. Now, plans on this scale, if not furnished with con- 
tour lines, do not embrace the salient features of a true map, whilst the dimen- 
sions of the sheets relating to any one county are so large, that though highly use- 
ful to geological surveyors and miners, they cannot be consulted for improvements 
of roads, construction of canals, railroads, or other public works, still less for any 
general military movements or travelling purposes. With the extension of the 
Survey to the North of England and Scotland, not only has the six-inch scale been 
adopted, but much larger cadastral plans, on the 25-inch scale, have been and are 
in execution. While these plans are, I grant, most valuable to individual pro- 
prietors, they are beside the purposes of the geographer, inasmuch as they exhibit 
no attempt whatever at the delineation of physical features. Hence I regret that 
their execution should have been preferred to the completion, in the first instance, 
of an intelligible and useful Map of the British Isles, which, if made to depend on 
the previous completion of tkedlabornhala plans, will still involve, I fear, the lapse 
of another very long period before the whole country will possess what geographers 
consider a map. The other and the most powerful cause which has retarded the 
progress of good cartography has been the frequently recurring cold fits of indiffer- 
ence and consequent cutting off of the supplies by which our legislature has been 
periodically affected, and which have necessarily occasioned a collapse and stagna- 
tion in the works of this important Survey. 
As respects my own special department, or the “ Geological Survey,” I deprecate 
still more strongly the delay of the construction of the one-inch Map, seeing that 
no geologist can yet labour effectively in the Highlands of Scotland, and accurately 
