Anniversary Address to the Royal Geological Society. 195 
Griffith turned his attention to geology and mining engineer- 
ing in the year 1800, or immediately after. Having studied chemis- 
try, mineralogy, and geology in London for two years, under the 
well-known William Nicholson, and having become acquainted 
with practical mining in various parts of England and of Scotland, 
and having studied in Edinburgh under Sir James Hall, Playfair, 
Jameson, &c., he returned to Ireland in 1808, and immediately 
joined the Dublin Society. It was in the very next year that he 
undertook the first of his numerous surveys and investigations 
for that Society ; this was a Geological and Mineralogical Survey 
of the county Dublin. In the same year he was appointed by 
the Commissioners as one of the engineers to examine and report 
on the bogs of Ireland ; this gave opportunity for examining geo- 
logically various parts of the country. In 1812 he was appointed 
Professor of Geology and Mining Engineer to the Royal Dublin 
Society. It was in this year, perhaps even in the preceding, that 
he commenced his map at the suggestion of his friend, G. B. 
Greenough, afterwards the well-known author of the early Geo- 
logical Map of England. About this time he surveyed the 
Leinster coal district, his Geological and Mining Report on which 
was published in 1814. In that year he made for the Dublin 
Society a general mining survey through Leitrim, Roscommon, 
Galway, Clare, Kerry, Limerick, and Cork, the length of the tour 
being nearly 1,000 miles ; the results were afterwards detailed in 
his mining lecturesin connexion with theSociety. Inconsequence of 
the information he had already collected, combined with what little 
there was to be obtained from other sources, he was enabled to pre- 
sent in public, at his lectures in 1815, what we shall call the first 
edition of his Geological Map of Ireland. This was never printed. 
It is a curious coincidence that it was in this same year, 1815, 
that the first Geological Map of England, by William Smith, was 
published. His continued employment in carrying out similar 
works for the Society enabled him to be always adding to and 
improving the details of his map, until 1822, when his appoint- 
ment as Engineer of Public Works in- Cork, Kerry, and Limerick, 
gave him further facilities for obtaining information. Then in 
1825 he was appointed by the Lord Lieutenant (Marquis of 
Wellesley) to carry out the Boundary Survey, the duties of which 
involved his visiting, sometimes more than once, nearly every 
SciEN, Proc. R.D.S., Vou, 1, PT. 111 P 
