272 
SIR RODERICK I. MURCHISON’S ADDRESS. [May 24, 1858. 
to inquire into and report upon the whole question of the scales 
of the survey; the members of the Commission having been 
Lord Wrottesley, the Earl of Eosse, Lord Brougham, the Lord Jus- 
tice General, Vice-Chancellor Turner, the Astronomer Eoyal, the 
Eight Hon. E. Cardwell, Sir Eichard Griffiths, General Cameron, 
Mr. Brunei, and Mr. Vignolles, 
It is to be hoped that the Beport of these Commissioners, what- 
ever it may be, will be adopted by Parliament, and considered a 
final settlement of this long vexed question. 
The progress of the survey during the last year has, I regret to 
say, been greatly retarded in consequence of the reduction in Ihe 
amount of the grant to the extent of 30,0007, and the necessary dis- 
charge of upwards of 1000 surveyors and draftsmen. 
In England, however, the publication of the large plans of the 
county of Durham is nearly complete ; those of Yorkshire and Lanca- 
shire having long since been published. The survey is now proceed- 
ing in Westmoreland, Northumberland, and Cumberland : a large 
portion of each of the two former is already drawn, and will be shortly 
published ; and as the surveyors have now got through the great 
manufacturing towns and the populous mining districts, and have 
the more open country before them, a much more rapid progress 
may be confidently expected, and the completion of the survey of 
the northern counties may be soon anticipated. 
In Scotland, with the exception of a small portion of Lanarkshire 
and Eoxburghshire, the survey of the following counties is com- 
plete : Edinburgh, Haddington, Linlithgow, Eenfrew, Ayr, Dum- 
fries, Berwick, Selkirk, Fife, Kinross, Lanark, and Eoxburgh ; and 
the work is proceeding in Forfarshire, Perthshire, Stirlingshire, 
and Dumbartonshire. In fact, with the exception of the narrow strip 
of country along the eastern borders of Scotland to the north of 
Aberbrothick, the greater part of the cultivated districts of Scot- 
land has been surveyed and drawn either on the large scale of 
2:5 or that of 6 inches to a mile. 
The plans on the 6 inch scale are now immediately reduced 
to the 1 inch scale, and engraved, and I still hope, therefore, to 
see, in my day, the greater part of our country represented on 
a map properly so called. Several of the sheets of England and 
Scotland have been published during the last year, copies of which 
are in the Society’s Map Office ; and I beg specially to direct 
the attention of the Members to the manner in which the features 
of the ground have been delineated on the Edinburgh sheet, and also 
