INTRODUCTION. 
The building in which the collections illustrative of the geolo- 
gical structure and of the mineral produce of the British islands 
and their dependencies, constituting the Museum of Practical 
Geology, are exhibited to the public, is, in addition, the seat of 
the Government School of Mines, and contains the central office 
of the Geological Survey of the United Kingdom, out of which 
both the Museum and the School have arisen. 
In the year 1851 numerous memorials, praying for the 
establishment of a mining school, were addressed to the Govern- 
ment by the leading representatives of the mining interest of 
Great Britain. The memorialists urged that, though the value 
of the annual mineral produce of this country amounted to 
28,000,000Z., equalling four-ninths of the total amount produced 
by the whole of Europe, and far exceeding that yielded by any 
other state, the miners and metallurgists of the United Kingdom 
were unable to obtain that instruction in the theory and the 
practice of their calling, which had long been carefully provided 
for their foreign competitors in the mining colleges of France, 
Belgium, Prussia, Saxony, Austria, Spain, and Sweden, and 
the effect of which, in all cases, had been a marked increase in the 
economy, efficiency, and safety of mining operations. 
Guided by those principles of policy which had led successive 
administrations to establish or to support schools of art and 
design, for the advantage of other great manufacturing interests, 
the Government acceded to the request of the memorialists ; the 
immediate realization of whose wishes was doubtless much facili- 
tated by the circumstance that the complete nucleus of a mining 
school already existed in the officers, the laboratories, and the 
mineral and fossil collections, of the Geological Survey of the 
United Kingdom. 
This Survey, commenced single-handed by the late Sir Henry 
Do la Beche, in the year 1 834, had undergone a slow and gradual 
expansion, and as the value and the necessary magnitude of its 
operations became more obvious, had met with more and more 
