4 
Proceedings of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. [Sess. 
policy. These difficulties might be considerably diminished by the federa- 
tion of firms in the separate industries. 
Turning now to the mining industry, I may direct attention to the 
application of the results of scientific research to the development of a new 
field of iron-ore in Scotland. In the course of mapping the Mesozoic or 
Secondary rocks in the island of Raasay for the Geological Survey, my 
late friend and colleague, Horace B. Woodward, discovered a bed of oolitic 
iron-ore that had not previously been noticed. By means of the fossils he 
was able to show that the bedded ore occurred in the upper part of the 
Middle Lias. He called attention to the fact that the Raasay ironstone 
closely resembled that of Cleveland in Yorkshire, and occupied nearly the 
same horizon. He noted that the Raasay ore yielded 29 per cent, of 
metallic iron in the grey rock, and 37 per cent, in the brown rock. The 
results of this research were communicated to the Geological Section of 
the British Association at the Nottingham Meeting in 1893, and were 
published in the Geological Magazine the same year. 
Here was a discovery of great potential importance, for if the bedded 
ore was of considerable horizontal extent, it implied a valuable addition to 
the iron-ore resources of Scotland. Its outcrop at the surface had been 
traced for about a mile. The comparison with the Cleveland deposit, 
whose yearly output varies from five million to six million tons, was a 
sufficient inducement to those engaged in the mining industry to develop 
the Raasay field. But, strange to say, sixteen years elapsed before any 
attempt was made to prove this field. In 1909, Mr Wallace Thorney croft, 
the present President of the Institute of Mining Engineers, approached the 
Geological Survey, and obtained all available information regarding the 
disposition of the rocks. Having made arrangements with the owner, he 
systematically proved the field by a series of shallow bores, the thickness 
of the seam, its variation in quality, the horizontal extent that was 
workable. In these explorations he had the co-operation of one of the 
staff of the Geological Survey who had expert knowledge of the fossil 
zones of the Upper and Middle Lias, which was essential to the proper 
completion of the work. This exploitation was crowned with success, and 
the field is now being wrought by one of the leading firms in the mining 
industry in Scotland. 
Still another example might be quoted of effective co-operation between 
the scientific staff of the Geological Survey and those engaged in the mining 
industry. One question of extreme economic importance at present is that 
of concealed coalfields, that is to say, coalfields of Carboniferous age which 
are covered by younger formations composed of Permian or Triassic strata. 
