4 



wc shall be mindful, and which is a great encouragement to our exertions. 

 Naturalists' clubs may combine a few zealous workers, but they cannot afford 

 funds for the publication of transactions, or communication of information. 



It is a necessary consequence of our Institution that we shall have a 

 local organisation as well as a general one : we shall have our local secre- 

 taries, and in some places our local committees ; and wherever a special 

 investigation is to be carried on, we shall have the machinery to secure it. 

 Whoever considers the formation of architectural and archaeological socie- 

 ties throughout the country for the purpose of local observation, will see 

 that we have likewise a wide scope for investigation. They have merely 

 a few buildings to examine, and a few chance explorations, to gratify 

 them, but we have the whole surface of the country open to us, and the 

 fruitful contents of its strata. Thus our mission is greater, and we must 

 endeavour to fulfil it. 



It will be seen what assistance our local members will afford to the Geo- 

 gical Section of the British Association at its various places of meeting, and 

 what opportunities they will have of carrying out any local enquiry. My 

 object on the present evening is to show that our organisation permits us 

 to carry out continuously and systematically that important end of geolo- 

 gical labours — the study of the geology of our own country. The collector 

 of fossils may gratify himself, but there his labours centre and end ; but he 

 who adds one new fact to our knowledge of the geological formation of 

 this country and its mineral resources renders a service to the common 

 cause, and becomes a national benefactor, by the same title as he who 

 grows two blades of grass where one grew before : he adds to our stock of 

 knowledge, and thereby to our national wealth, for on the soil of this coun- 

 try are we greatly dependent for the growth of vegetable food, for the nur- 

 ture of cattle, for the supply of water and water-power, for the provision 

 of manures, for fuel, for the materials of building, for our metals, and the 

 physical instruments of our greatness as a nation. 



Let us briefly consider the effect of an individual discovery in this de- 

 partment of science. Take the anthracites, for instance ; their applica- 

 tion for steam fuel has caused general researches to be made to ascertain 

 our supplies of this fuel. The great discovery of the blackband ironstone, 

 followed up by the explorer, has created in Scotland a vast seat of the iron 

 manufacture, as the discovery of other stores of the metal have made 

 Cleveland and Northamptonshire new seats of the same industry. The 

 Torbane fuel, found useful for gas, has given a stimulus to the application 

 of the like formation to industrial purposes. The adaptation of coprolites 

 for agricultural purposes has made the working of these fossils a matter of 

 importance. One word or one experiment has been the origin of branches 

 of industry which employ their tens of thousands, upon minerals which 

 once were lying waste and idle. In the cases here referred to districts un- 

 occupied were made the seats of manufacture, or new resources were given 

 for universal employment to populations ready to engage in them. Year 

 by year the application of some mineral substance is discovered, and it 

 comes into request. Thus the successful introduction of aluminium as an 

 article of commerce is attracting attention to the sources of supply. The 

 metal is almost universally diffused, but the best rocks or soils for metal- 

 lurgic purposes have yet to be ascertained, and it is strange that as yet the 

 aluminium workers of Europe are chiefly supplied from a local deposit of 

 kryolite in Greenland, with one chief material for their operations. 



That great national establishment of the Geological Survey is earnestly 

 and perseveringly carrying on its labours, and mapping out these islands ; 

 but it has to follow in the wake of the Topographical Survey, of which 

 England is still incomplete, and of Scotland little is mapped out. This 

 great work, when carried out, will make known to us the broad features 

 of the geological formations of the country on the scale of the Ordnance 

 Survey, of 1 inch to the mile ; and many details will be afforded by the 



