May 24, 1858.] 
ORDNANCE SURVEY. 
271 
on her voyage to India and China; by Captain Eyder, in the 
Dauntless , in the Mediterranean ; by Captain Otter, in the 
Baltic, North Sea, and Hebrides ; and generally by all officers 
engaged in the surveying service. These observations, after the 
variation chart of the world is published, will be printed, so that 
those interested may be enabled to examine the data on which the 
chart is founded. 
Besides the works above enumerated as in progress in different 
parts of the world, the labours of the Hydrographic Office during 
the past year have consisted in the publication of upwards of 80 
new or corrected charts of various coasts, and plans of harbours ; of 
annual lighthouse lists for all countries, compiled by Commander 
Dunsterville, r.n. ; of notices to mariners of new lights, or changes 
in them, prepared by Mr. G. Marsh, r.n., 1000 copies of which 
are weekly distributed ; of tide tables, with daily predictions for 24 
home ports, with the time and height of high water on full and 
change, for the chief places on the globe, computed by Mr. J. Burd- 
wood, r.n., 1250 copies of which are distributed and sold ; of various 
hydrographic notices of new rocks and shoals discovered, of maritime 
positions recently determined, all of which contribute materially to 
the benefit of navigation and the advancement of our knowledge of 
the physical geography of the globe. 
Ordnance Survey . — During the last year the Ordnance Survey has 
been subjected, as I am informed by its able superintendent Colonel 
James, to another of those interruptions which for many years past 
have so marked its progress. In 1856 a committee of the House 
of Commons recommended that the series of plans which the 
National Survey should produce should, as respected Scotland, be — 
1. Plans of Towns on the T ^o scale, or 42 feet to an inch. 2. Plans 
of Parishes on the gj’p scale, equal 25 inches to a mile, or 1 inch 
to 1 acre. 3. Plans of Counties on the scale of 6 inches to a mile. 
4. Map of the Kingdom on the scale of 1 inch to 1 mile. 
During the year 1856-7 that series was in the course of rapid 
production and publication, when the House of Commons decided 
that the larger plans were to be discontinued. 
Seeing that by Colonel James’s recent introduction of photography 
the plans on the larger scales can be so economically and rapidly 
reduced to the smaller scales, whilst the extra cost of plotting the 
survey on the 25 inch scale instead of the 6 inch is so trifling in 
amount, the last Government advised the appointment of a Royal 
Commission, composed of men eminent in science or public affairs, 
