390 Geological Society : — Anniversary Address. 



I consider this Report as of the highest value, in showing the 

 general advantages which may be derived from connecting scientific 

 knowledge with practical arts ; and I trust we shall hear no more of 

 such discreditable and unfounded assertions as, not long ago, passed 

 uncontradicted, at a meeting of an architectural society in London, 

 that Stonehenge is made of statuary marble. 



GEOLOGICAL COMMITTEE OF ENGLISH AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



The appointment of a Geological Committee, by the English 

 Agricultural Society, at their meeting in Oxford, in July last, shows 

 the sense entertained by that numerous body of landed proprietors, 

 and cultivators of the soil of England, of the important services 

 which may be rendered to them, by the application of geological 

 knowledge to the improvement of the productive capabilities of the 

 land. 



It is well known to geologists that an almost unbounded supply 

 of mineral manure may be found in the sub-strata, which in very 

 many districts are composed of ingredients different from those of 

 the surface. So constant are the characters of many of the beds 

 of the geological groups which pass in long and narrow bands from 

 one side of England to the other, that a single experiment, carefully 

 conducted, on any one stratum of each formation, with a view to 

 ameliorate its soil, by an admixture of the ingredients of some other 

 adjacent stratum, will afford an example which may be followed with 

 similar results in distant parts of the kingdom, through which this 

 same stratum passes, in its course across the island. 



Experiments, therefore, conducted by the owners and occupiers 

 of land, under the advice of this Geological Committee, aided by 

 the facilities for the analysis of soils now afforded by the laboratory 

 of the Museum of CEconomic Geology, may shortly enable us to 

 realize at least some share of the success that attended Lavoisier's 

 application of chemistry to agriculture in France*. 



SCHOOLS OF CIVIL AND MINING ENGINEERING IN THE 

 UNIVERSITIES OF DURHAM AND LONDON. 



The increasing demand for education in practical science has been 

 recently provided for in the University of Durham, by the establish- 

 ment of a course of instruction in Civil and Mining Engineering, 

 with lectures in the Mathematical sciences, Chemistry, Metallurgy, 

 Mineralogy, Geology, Surveying, Mapping, and Drawing, in addition 

 to Ancient and Modern Languages. To theoretical instruction in 



missioners, Mr. Charles Smith, in lectures delivered before the Society for 

 the Encouragement of Arts, &c. and the Institute of British Architects; and 

 by Mr. Brayley,in a Course on the Mineralogy of the Arts, delivered before 

 the Architectural Society, at one of the Friday-Evening Meetings of the 

 members of the Royal Institution, and in two lectures expressly on the results 

 arrived at by the Commissioners, given at the Russell Institution.— Edit.] 



* It was said of Lavoisier, that in ten years he doubled the produce 

 of his land in grain, while he quintupled the number of his flocks. No 

 doubt this report is much exaggerated. 



