The Ordnance Survey of Great Britain. 249 
This led to the employment of civilian surveyors to advance 
the progress of the map, and it was found necessary at great 
additional expense, to revise and correct these contract plans. 
The work did not possess the accuracy demanded by the 
admiralty in forming the basis of their coast surveys for the Geo- 
logical Survey or the civil engineers. As a military map its 
publication during war was suspended, and its continuance be- 
came a matter of doubt in time of peace. 
At one time the gentlemen of Lincolnshire and Rutlandshire 
proposed to the government to proceed with the map of their 
district out of its regular turn, upon condition of their becoming 
subscribers for a certain number of copies. These gentlemen 
partly wished for the map for their use in hunting, and partly 
for the improvement of the country in marking out the drainage 
of the fens. 
Prejudices existed, which could be traced back to the Norman 
conquest and Domesday Survey—against the right of a surveyor 
to enter a private estate, and in the early contract plans for the 
English maps the surveyors neglected the survey of the lesser 
streams, to obviate the inconvenience of trespassing and to save 
themselves trouble. 
These were some of the causes of delay, expense and insufli- 
ciency which had operated against the earlier surveys. 
The survey of Ireland began in 1825 under far more favorable 
circumstances than the Ordnance map of England and Wales. 
The triangulation commenced from a more accurate baseline 
than any preceding triangulation, and was designed to serve as a 
basis for any future survey in any scale, however large. 
The House of Commons passed an act defining its principal 
object, prescribing a legal mode for ascertaining the boundaries 
which were to be surveyed, granting the surveyors power to enter 
lands for the purposes of the survey, and preventing the removal 
of the objects used. 
The earlier methods of military surveying were abandoned, and 
new instruments and a system were devised for its execution. 
It is important to note that the organization of the Irish survey 
marked an important epoch in the history of the Ordnance Sur- 
vey, viz: its change from a topographic to a cadastral survey. 
In Ireland, subordinate to the parishes, there is an internal 
division of smaller denomination called townlands, which are very 
frequently, but not uniformly, conterminous with property. 
