ANNIVERSARY ADDRESS OF THE PRESIDENT. XlUl 



factory manner. This map was laid down and drawn on a, scale of 

 4 inches to a mile ; and I remember well my visit to the Court-house 

 of Castlebar, some thirty years ago, to look at the map, which was 

 then, as now, suspended in a large room, and justly considered a 

 topographical work of the very highest order. That the triumph it 

 then achieved was well-merited, may be judged from the honour- 

 able testimony which that able judge, Sir Richard Griffith, Bart., 

 known to us all as one of our oldest and most able members, has 

 recently borne to its excellence in the following words addressed to 

 me on the subject : — " Though slightly faded, the mountain-ranges, 

 hills, and other, even very minor, features of the country have been so 

 carefully and faithfully represented by drawing and shading, as to 

 present one of the most striking and effective maps I have ever seen 

 on so large a scale, and in pictorial effect little inferior to the mag- 

 nificent map of the mountains of North Wales, long since executed 

 by Mr. Dawson, father to the present Colonel Dawson, R.E." This 

 warm and frank expression of approbation, bestowed by a Civil 

 Engineer of such eminence as Sir Richard Griffith, himself the author 

 of the highly- valued Geological Map of Ireland which will long be an 

 object of emulation to the Government Geological surveyors, to his 

 former associate and acquaintance, seems peculiarly appropriate, as it 

 is not too much to say that the map of Mr. Bald was in its time a 

 fitting object of emulation to the Government National Surveyors, 

 whether Engineer Officers and men, or Artillery Officers for some 

 time associated with them, or Civilians who formed so large a por- 

 tion of their hard-working staff, although it is much to be feared 

 they shared more in the labours than in the honours and advantages 

 of their military comrades. 



Independently of the merits of his map of Mayo, Mr. Bald deserves 

 to be remembered with respect by the Officers .of the Ordnance, or, 

 as it should now be called, the National Survey, for the manly and 

 frank manner in which he gave his evidence in their favour, when 

 the propriety of confiding the charge of the Irish Survey to the 

 Ordnance was under discussion before a Committee of the House of 

 Commons. The opinions of Civil Engineers and Surveyors were 

 much divided ; but Mr. Bald allowed no private interests to blind 

 him to the advantage of a uniform system, carried on with the regu- 

 larity and precision which military discipline enforces and ensures : 

 but, while I say this in justice to the liberality of Mr. Bald, let it not 

 be supposed that I am the advocate of monopoly or exclusion in any 

 department of the public service. 



When Mr. Bald left Ireland, he was employed for a time as a 

 draftsman at the Admiralty, and then, by the Corporation of Glasgow, 

 as Engineer for the improvement of the navigation of the Clyde by 

 the erection of emban ki n g- walls to circumscribe its channel, and by 

 dredging to deepen it — reports of which operations were drawn up 

 by him and printed. He was in this manner the recognized Resident 

 Engineer to the Trustees of the River Clyde from 1839 to 1845, in 

 the summer of which year he was engaged by the Chamber of Com- 

 merce to examine the River Seine in France, from Havre -de -Grace 



