COMPOSITION AND DISTRIBUTION OF HAEMATITE IRON-ORES. 9 



The Committee still hold this view, and think that, had coroners' vercUcts 

 been as satisfactory as they might have been, boUer explosions would not 

 have been as numerous as they now are. "With the additional experience 

 of another year they feel compelled to take one other step in advance, and 

 they have come to the conclusion that the time has arrived when the Govern- 

 ment should enforce the periodical inspection of all steam-boilers, though, as 

 ah-eady stated, they do not think that the Government should turn boUer- 

 inspector*. They are convinced that explosions might be, and ought to 

 be, prevented ; that competent inspection is adequate for this purpose, and 

 that any weU-organized system of inspection, extended throughout the entire 

 country, would practically extinguish boUer explosions, and save the greater 

 part of the 75 lives now annually sacrificed thereby. 



(Signed on behalf of the Committee) 



William Faikbaien, Chairman. 

 Manchester, September 12th, 1870. 



Report of the Committee appointed for the pwrpose of calling the atten- 

 tion of Her Majesty's Government to the importance of completing, 

 without delay, the valuable investigation into the composition and 

 geological distribution of the Hcematite Iron-ores of Great Britain 

 and Ireland, which has been already in part published in the Memoirs 

 of the Geological Survey, — consisting of Prof. Stokes, F.R.S., Prof. 

 Harkness, F.R.S., and R. A. C. Godwin-Austen^ F.R.S. 



The Committee appointed at the Exeter Meeting of the Association " for the 

 purpose of calling the attention of Her Majesty's Government to the import- 

 ance of completing, without delay, the valuable investigation into the com- 

 position and geological distribution of the hsematite iron-ores of Great Britain 

 and Ireland, which has been already in part published in the Memoirs of the 

 Geological Survey," present to the General Committee the following Report : — 

 In execution of their duty, the Committee had in the first instance to 

 consider to what department of Government the application should be 

 addressed. For the reasons stated in the application itself, they decided that 

 it belonged to the Education department. They accordingly addressed the 

 following letter to the Lord President of the Council : — 



-'o 



" Lensfield Cottage, Cambridge, 



17th December, 1869. 



" My Lord, — I have the honour to inform your Lordship that, at the last 

 Meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, a resolu- 

 tion was passed appointing a Committee ' for the purpose of caUing the atten- 

 tion of Her Majesty's Government to the importance of completing, without 



* From the conclusion that " the time has arrived when the Grovernment should enforce 

 the periodical inspection of all steam-boilers," one of the members of the Committee, 

 F. J. Bramwell, Esq., C.E., wishes to express his dissent, " as in his judgment not even 

 the best of the modes yet suggested for an inspection would be free from hindering 

 improvements in the construction and use of sceam-boilers, and, in his opmion, the saving 

 of some out of the few lives annually now lost would be dearly purchased by fettering the 

 progress of mechanical engineering." 



