Geological Survey oj Great Britain. 359 



To have succeeded in collecting so large a concourse of scien- 

 tific men from all parts of the United States and British America, 

 and to have so successfully managed the local aflfairs of the meet- 

 ing, is in the highest degree creditable to the Local Committee, and 

 will be productive of great and lasting good. The men of science 

 are not so prominently before the public as the leading politicians ; 

 but they have a large and deeply seated influence, both personally 

 and through their connection with literature and institutions of 

 learning. That this influence should be of a cosmopolitan, and 

 not of a sectional character, is of the highest importance, and such 

 a meeting as that which has just closed tends more strongly than 

 any other agency in this direction. Nothing connected with lite- 

 rature or science can be more delightful than to see able and 

 learned men from the South and the North, the East and the 

 West, from Republican and British America, quietly and harmo- 

 niously discussing questions all of which bear more or less directly 

 on the well-being, not only of America, but of man. Such a 

 spectacle relieves science from any suspicion of being a trifling 

 pursuit, stimulates the mind of the place in which it occurs, hon- 

 ours that place in the estimation of the world, and diffuses around 

 a feeling of amity and mutual helpfulness, that must mitigate, if 

 it cannot overcome, the jealousies of national and local rivalry. 



In our present number will be found abstracts of two of the 

 papers referred to in the former notice — that of Prof Ramsay on 

 the Geological Survey of Great Britain, and that of Dr. Rae on 

 the Search for Sir J. Franklin. 



ARTICLE XXXUI. — Abstract of Professor Ramsay's Pai:)er on 

 the Geological Survey of Great Britain. 



It has been thought by some of my friends here present that a 

 description of the mode of conducting the Geological Survey of the 

 United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland would be interesting 

 in this country, when so many great and important geological 

 surveys are now in progress in the United States and Canada, 

 and, as I believe, will shortly be the case in Nova Scotia. The 

 geological survey of Great Britain was commenced more than 20 

 years ago by the off"er of Sir Henry de la Beche, who commenced 

 a geological survey of England at his own expense. He commenced 

 this survey, beginning in Cornwall, stretching east through De- 



