Geological Surveys in Great Britain, &c. 29*7 



them it appears that Sir William Logan, the Director of the Sur- 

 vey, and his assistants, have traversed and examined for 1500 

 miles, every part of Canada, from Gaspe to the head of Lake 

 Superior, following the Lakes and the great and small rivers, and 

 penetrating the forest-clad interior, often in districts utterly un- 

 visited by settlers. The result is, that all the great geological 

 features of Canada are laid down on the map, and in many dis- 

 tricts, the most interesting new topographical and geological 

 details have been inserted with unrivalled skill. 



But those who merely look at the result have little idea of the 

 difficulties that attend such an undertaking in a country the 

 greater part of which is yet unreclaimed. From the want of 

 accurate maps to serve as a foundation for geological work, Sir 

 William and his assistants have actually been obliged in almost 

 all cases to construct topographical plans — truly very different 

 operations from those of an Ordnance Survey in fertile England, 

 where houses and steeples, hill-tops and beacons, afford innumer- 

 able points for accurate triangulation, while all the minor field 

 operations are carried on almost mechanically by well-trained 

 Sappers and Miners. Though like in result also, their labour is 

 yet very different in kind from English field-work in geology, 

 where the explorer has road sections and railway cuttings, open 

 rivers, quarries and coal-pits, all waiting to afford him data. If 

 the lowlands of England were "partly, and the highlands of Scot- 

 land and Wales entirely, covered with lofty and almost impene- 

 trable forests, and if the most experienced English geologists were 

 turned loose upon these countries, and required to unravel all the 

 intricacies of their stratifications, they would have some idea of a 

 kind of geological labour not to be met with in any part of Europe 

 out of Russia. On a gigantic scale, the great Laurentine chain, 

 extending from Labrador to Lake Superior, might represent the 

 highlands of Scotland — Gaspe the mountains of Wales — and the 

 fiat Silurian strata bordering the St. Lawrence, the Ottawa, and 

 Lakes Ontario, Erie, and Huron, might be compared, in their 

 broad terraced arrangement, to the escarpments of the oolitic rocks 

 and chalk in the centre of England. Geology is a delightful 

 science, but it may be questioned if gentleman who live at home 

 at ease would in all cases be enthusiastic enough to devote them- 

 selves to it were they obliged, for half of every year, for half a 

 lifetime, to rough it in dreary pine forests — to navigate newly-dis- 

 covered rivers in birch-bark canoes made by Indian assistants on 



