7 
whom they were addressed was so great, that, in the following 
year the officers of the School of Mines voluntarily determined to 
increase their labours in this direction, each professor engaging 
to give a course of six lectures in alternate years — and thus pro- 
viding the working men with an average of twenty-six, instead 
of six, lectures in each year. 
The steady and complete success of these voluntary courses, 
which have now been continued over a period of ten years, has 
led the Professors of Chemistry, Physics, Natural History, and 
Geology, to extend this kind of instruction to a larger body of 
the people, without, however, in any way interfering with the 
working men’s lectures. In the course of the past session 
(1860-61), they delivered four courses of Evening Lectures on the 
principles of Natural Philosophy, Chemistry, Natural History, 
and Geology, addressing themselves especially to persons who are 
unable to obtain instruction in the elements of science through 
those channels which are open to the possessors of wealth and 
leisure. These Evening Lectures were so well attended that 
similar courses will be given during the present session,* 
While the periodical issue of the geological maps, the mono- 
graphs, and the decades, and the extent, completeness, and orderly 
arrangement of the Museum, sufficiently testify to the past and 
present activity of the officers of the Survey — the Director- 
General would point to the important public positions now held 
by many former students of the School of Mines, f as satisfactory 
evidence of* its success, during the short period of its existence : 
and lie also appeals to the fact, that Monday after Monday, 
during the sessions of ten successive years, audiences of working 
men have filled the theatre, to prove that the professors of the 
institution have interpreted their constitutive instructions in no 
niggardly or unwilling spirit. 
The Director-General and his colleagues earnestly hope that 
their further efforts in the same course may meet with the appre- 
ciation and support of the classes for whose benefit they are 
made ; and that the Government School of Mines may ultimately 
attain the utmost amount of usefulness, as a means of diffusing 
sound elementary instruction in science among the masses, that 
may be consistent with its full efficiency as an aid to the develop- 
ment of one of the greatest interests of a commercial country. 
* See p. 32. 
f See p. 14. 
