310 Notices' of Memoirs — The Geological Survey. 



that office was in the year 1883 transferred to the Home Office, under 

 which the Inspectors serve. 



We may now trace briefly the progress of the Geological Survey 

 from its commencement to the present time. As above stated, it 

 was begun as a private enterprise by De la Beche previous to the 

 year 1832, and was first established as a branch of the Ordnance 

 Survey in 1835. Ten years afterwards, in 1845, the staff was 

 considerably increased, and the Survey was transferred from the 

 Board of Ordnance to the " Office of Woods and Works," so that 

 the whole of the geological organization, including the Survey, 

 Museum, and Mining Kecord Office, was thus united in one Govern- 

 ment Department, under De la Beche as Director-General. The 

 Survey, which had hitherto been that of Great Britain, now became 

 that of the United Kingdom. The staff in England and Wales was 

 placed under A. C. Eamsay, as Director for Great Britain, while 

 a small force was placed in Ireland, in charge of Henry James, K.E. 



The Great Exhibition of 1851 led to the establishment in 1853 

 of a Department of Science and Art, under the Board of Trade, 

 to which the Jermyn Street organization was transferred. In 1856 

 this Department was placed under the control of the Lords of the 

 Committee of Privy Council on Education, and this arrangement 

 has continued up to the present time. 



By the time the Geological Survey was transferred in 1864 to 

 the Science and Art Department, great progress had been made 

 in the mapping of England and Ireland. The survey of the whole 

 of Wales had been completed and published, and the field-work 

 was advancing eastwards into the central counties of England. In 

 Ireland, the maps of the counties of Dublin, Kildare, Wicklow, 

 Carlow, Wexford, Kilkenny, Waterford, and almost all Cork had 

 been completed, and the field-work was being pushed into King's 

 County and Queen's County, and across Kerry and Limerick. In 

 the same year, 1854, the operations of the Survey were extended 

 into Scotland, where A. C. Eamsay broke ground in East Lothi'an. 



Up to this time the field-work of the staff in England and Wales 

 had been conducted upon the basis of the Ordnance maps on the 

 scale of one inch to a mile, no larger scale being available. In 

 Ireland, however, maps on the scale of six inches to a mile had 

 been published by the Ordnance Survey, and these from the 

 beginning were adopted as the groundwork of the Geological 

 Survey. Maps on this larger scale were available also in Scotland, 

 and were from the first made use of for geological purposes. As 

 the Geological Survey advanced northwards in England, it found 

 the six northern counties mapped on the six-inch scale, and at 

 once adopted this larger scale as the basis of the field-work. 



As the great advantages of the use of the larger scale came to be 

 recognized in practice, it was found that the superficial accumu- 

 lations could be expressed on this scale without unduly interfering 

 with the delineation of the structure of the rocks underneath. At 

 the same time, increased attention was now being paid to the 

 drifts which had been so long neglected. Their paramount 



