Our Coalfields: Present and Future Prospects. 551 
The Geological Survey. 
In any discussion of the present outlook of economic geology in 
Britain we naturally turn first to the work of the Geological Survey. 
When in 1835 the National Survey was founded with De la Beche 
as its first Director, it was clearly realized by the promoters that its 
great function was to develop the mineral resources of the Kingdom, 
which involved the systematic mapping of the rocks, and the 
collection, classification, and study of the minerals, rocks, and fossils 
illustrative of British Geology. For upwards of eighty years this 
work, launched by the enthusiasm and far-sighted genius of De la 
Beche, has been nobly sustained. We geologists outside the Survey 
are ever willing to testify to the excellence, within the Treasury- 
_ prescribed limits, of the published maps and memoirs. Indeed, it 
would be difficult to name a Government service in which the officers 
as a body are more efficient or more enthusiastic in their work. .. . 
But the time is opportune, I think, when we may ask whether the 
Survey is fulfilling all the functions that should be expected of it; 
whether it is adequately supported and financed by the Government ; 
whether it should not be encouraged to develop along lines which, 
hitherto, from sheer poverty of official support, have been found 
impracticable. 
It will be admitted that the re-mapping of the coalfields, which 
were originally surveyed on the old 1in. Ordnance Maps more than 
half a century ago, before much of the mining information now 
available could be utilized, is a primary duty and a pressing public 
necessity. But it would be a great mistake to allow other areas 
which have apparently little or no mineral wealth, and are destitute, 
so far as we at present know, of any geological problem of outstanding 
interest, like the problem of the Highland Schists, to remain, as at 
present, practically unsurveyed. Take, for example, the great spread 
of Old Red Sandstone in South Wales and the Border counties of 
England, which on the present Government maps is indicated with a 
single wash of colour, and here and there an outcrop of cornstone. 
It is true that the southern fringe of this area has been recently 
surveyed in more detail in re-mapping the South Wales Coalfield ; 
but there remain upwards of 2,000 square miles of Old Red Sandstone 
unsurveyed. A map indicating merely the outcrop of the main 
bands of sandstone, conglomerate, marl, and limestone would be of 
great assistance to engineers in such works as water-supply and 
sewage, as well as to agriculture. I am aware that many other 
areas more clamorously demanding a survey could be cited; but 
I give this example because it happens that a few months ago the 
Survey maps of the area were found to be useless for the purposes of 
an engineering work which had necessarily to be based upon the 
local geology. 
It is sometimes said, and with truth, that the great function of a 
Survey is to produce a geological map which should be a ‘ graphic 
inventory’, so far as its scale permits, of the mineral resources, actual 
and potential, of a country. After all, such a map, even when 
accompanied with its horizontal section and used by the trained 
geologist, is a very imperfect instrument by which to summarize and 
