472 
bodies, respecting the inadequacy of the scale of one inch to a mile, 
which has been hitherto employed in the Ordnance Map of England, 
the Lords of the Treasury have ordered the survey of the remainder 
of the Northern part of England ; viz. the six counties of Lancaster, 
York, Westmoreland, Cumberland, Durham and Northumberland, 
and the whole of Scotland, to be made on a seale better suited to 
purposes of public utility as well as of science. The proposed new 
scale being, as in the survey of Ireland, six inches to a mile, will 
allow the insertion of minute and valuable geological details, to the 
reception of which the one-inch scale is wholly inadequate: it will 
also be of vast advantage for all those profitable commercial pur- 
poses that are connected with the supply of mineral fuel to the ~ 
manufactures, and with the productions of the other great mining 
districts of the North. 
The paramount importance of supplying to the coal owners of 
this great district that best of all foundations of knowledge as to 
the structure and extent of the mineral riches of a country, which 
is afforded by a large and correct map, is too obvious to be insisted 
on. 
In connexion with the Ordnance Geological Survey, we may con- 
gratulate ourselves on the information, that Mr. John Phillips, having 
examined the fossils of the older rocks of Cornwall, Devon, and 
West Somerset for the Ordnance Report on these counties, is now en- ~ 
gaged with the organic remains of East Somerset, Gloucester, Mon- 
mouth, and South Wales: this appointment is the more important, 
because we have lately been taught more forcibly than ever the 
value of organic remains as affording the best test to identify geo- 
logical formations. This appointment of Mr. J. Phillips, and the com- 
mission not long since given to Mr. De la Beche, to colour geo- 
logically the Ordnance Map of the West of England and the district of 
the Coal formation of South Wales, afford almost the first example of 
the tardy recognition by the British Government of the vast public 
importance of the practice which has for nearly twenty years been 
acted on in France and in the United States, in appointing a 
commission of eminently qualified scientific men to survey and 
report on the Mineral and Geological productions of the country, 
and express the same by colours on the most perfect maps. To 
supply this deficiency, a large geologically coloured map and deli- 
neation of the strata of England and Wales was published in 1815 
by Mr. William Smith, under the encouragement of Sir Joseph 
Banks, and a large number of individual subscribers ;.and in 1819 
.a much more perfect physical and geological Map of England was 
2 
published at the voluntary cost, and by the gratuitous exertions of 
several Members of this Society (chiefly those of Mr. Greenough), 
more complete than any Map on a similar scale and extent yet pro- 
duced by the official labours of any Government in the world. 
BRITISH MUSEUM. 
You will learn with satisfaction, that in the month of June last, 
in consequence of an application from the British Association for 
