I 2 I 
Department, and will doubtless prove of more than mere local 
significance. 
Chemistry and Mineralogy. 
A very necessary and important part of the organisation for 
carrying out the geological work which has been outlined is the 
Laboratory, in which such chemical, mineralogical, and other 
researches essential for the proper discharge of the duties of the 
Survey are performed. The laboratory is under the charge of 
a specially trained officer, Mr. Simpson, associated with a staff of 
assistants. By means of the laboratory considerable assistance 
is rendered to and the time of the field staff greatly economised, 
for it is upon field work that the time of the staff can always be 
most profitably employed. 
To carry on the primary functions of the work in the labora- 
tory certain plant and accommodation are, of course, essential, 
and this is of such a nature as may be utilised for making the 
necessary assays, etc., for the State Batteries, that it has been 
found best in the interests of economy and efficiency to have this 
work carried out by the Survey. 
Part of the policy of the Government consists in the making 
of free assays and other determinations in the interests of bona 
fide prospectors, and most of this work is carried out in the 
Survey laboratory. This class of work naturally takes up a 
good deal of time, but by its means much valuable information 
as to the occurrence and distribution of minerals (which it is the 
function of the Department to secure) would probably be otherwise 
unobtainable or at any rate take many years to acquire. Since 
the present department was instituted there have been 5,8x6 free 
assays made, in addition to a number for which payment has been 
received. 
A good deal of the work of the laboratory is necessarily of a 
routine character, and much of it is embodied in the various 
official bulletins and annual reports. During the progress of 
this work there have been made 177 complete analyses ot rocks, 
78 mineral analyses, 97 analyses of mineral and allied waters, 
118 analyses of coal, 114 of lode stuff and ore mixtures, and 59 
soil extracts. 
The officers of the Survey laboratory occasionally make in 
the ordinary course of their duties important researches in con- 
nection with substances with which geology is concerned, and some 
years ago a special Bulletin (No. 6), designed to reduce these 
investigations to a systematic form, was prepared by Mr. Simpson, 
and made available to the public. 
A good deal has also been carried out in what may be called 
the domain of technology, which in some measure supplements 
the work of the Survey proper. Amongst this technological work 
may be mentioned, the researches into the causes of the corrosion 
of the pipes of the Goldfields Water Supply main, which w'ere 
