214 
proprietors, who are willing to place in a public national repository 
copies of the documents they possess relating to their respective 
mines. 
In 1834, the attention of the public was called to this subject by 
Mr. T. Sopwith*, an eminent civil engineer and mine surveyor at 
Newcastle; and this gentleman is preparing a practical book of 
instructions on the subject of drawing geological and mining plans, 
the conducting of subterranean surveys, and examining mineral dis- 
tricts, with a view to the preservation of such information respecting 
the state of each mine at the period when it may be abandoned, as 
may be useful when further proceedings are afterwards commenced 
therein, or in its vicinity. 
A museum of ceconomic geology, comprehending institutions of 
this kind, demonstrates, even to the unlearned, the advantages that 
result from science in its application to the extraction of the trea- 
sures which Providence has laid up in the rich storehouses of the 
interior of the earth ; and by exhibiting the results obtained from 
the elaboration of these materials, by the industry of man, in the 
workshop and at the forge, will afford a full and satisfactory reply 
to the question so often raised by persons to whom the value of the 
truths of pure science and philosophy, pursued for their own sake, 
are unintelligible,—and by whom everything is appreciated merely 
according to its immediate subserviency to the acquisition of 
wealth, or its ministration to the daily necessities or conveniences 
of human life. 
BUILDING-STONE COMMISSION. 
Another event which marks increasing attention to the practical 
importance of geology, is the publication of a Report to the Commis- 
sioners of Her Majesty’s Woods and Forests, from a Commission 
appointed by the Lords of the Treasury ; containing the results of 
an inquiry into the qualities and durability of the various Building- 
stones of this country, with a view to the selection of the best ma- 
terial to be employed in erecting the New Houses of Parliament. 
The results of this inquiry have been arranged in Tables, which 
represent the composition, colour, weight, size, cost, durability, &c., 
of all the most important kinds of stone that have been used in an- 
* See Sopwith on Isometric Drawing, p. 50, et seq. 
