of this nature; nor can it be expected that recommendations for colonial advantage will be much regarded in times when even the laborious surveys of the geology of England have been, till lately, left entirely to the generous self-devotion of individuals. It cannot be expected that costly works, like that on the "Silurian System" and some others we could name, produced at private expense, should be numerous; yet, except on the scale of illustration adopted in these volumes, they are inadequate for their object, and unsatisfactory even to their authors. One step has, however, at length been taken: the Ordnance Survey has been rendered in some degree serviceable to geology, both in England and Ireland; and the officers who conduct this noble work are both able and desirous to make it a geological as well as geographical monument.
Let this truly national labour be completed; let the Mining Districts be illustrated by maps on a larger scale; let a system be introduced by which invaluable mining records, now perishing in the unsafe custody of individuals, shall be preserved for the benefit of this and future times: the public will reap incalculable advantage, and geologists will advance nearer to completeness the bases of their speculations. This is all, or nearly all, the encouragement which Geology needs from a government; or rather, these are the most obvious modes of giving to the community a foretaste of the benefits which this science is destined to bestow. Strong in its fundamental facts, corroborated in its inferences by the progress of all collateral branches of the study of Creation, linked in union with the highest forms of scientific truth, and grasping at objects full of the noblest interest for man, and the most reverential thoughts toward the Maker and Preserver of the Universe, nothing but the general decay of the human intellect will permit Geology to languish, till the Natural History of the ancient earth be known to its modern occupier Man.
