virtual completion of the original field work of the Irish Survey, and the publication of the maps to the last county: the commencement of the two great northern English counties, to be mapped on an equally large scale as the sister island: the railway mania which culminated in 1845, and filched from his splendidly trained staff some of the best men by the lure of the inflated wages any one calling himself a surveyor was able at this period to earn. And on the eve of his enforced retirement from the State department he had so assiduously served for over five-and-forty years, it must have been some satisfaction to General Colby to have elicited from the parliamentary Select Committee, which sat in 1846, the admission that the Ordnance Survey of Ireland "will bear comparison with any survey which has ever been completed." Indeed it may be truly said that the Irish Survey was the touch-stone of Colby's capabilities and organising faculty.
In summing up his chief's character and idiosyncrasies, Colonel Portlock eulogises Colby's nice judgment, and his desire to avoid offending national prejudices. To this latter feeling, and the maxims inculcated in that sense among the subordinates of the Survey in Ireland, are ascribed the freedom from molestation enjoyed by our people in their wanderings through that country, even in the most disturbed times. The Sabbath-whistling incident in Scotland we have already noted, was an exemplification of this. To these traits are to be added his remarkable discrimination in the selection of officers of special ability, his frank simplicity of character, his genuine yet unostentatious hospitality, and his kindness of heart. Unlike some chiefs, the man was too generous to suck the brains of his subordinates for his own advantage, and then give them no personal credit for their labours. On the contrary, his habit was ever to push their scientific reputations to the front side by side with his own. Nor, in bidding farewell to this masterly director of State-mappers, can we do better than carry away the words of one super-eminent in the world of science – testimony not less laudatory to the great national institution, which had been so expanded and improved by Thomas Frederic Colby, than to the individual himself. "I never," wrote the now veteran Ex-Astronomer-Royal and past President of the Royal Society,[1] "heard a word from him which implied that he was looking abroad for personal glory, or for any expression except the recognition of his results, – as producing a scientific survey superior to any that had ever been made, and a cadastral mapping to which no other, I believe, can be compared."
I shall conclude my review of those who conducted the British Survey with special mention of one, whose figure next to Colby's, fills the largest and most conspicuous place in its history – Lieutenant-General Sir Henry James. It is, to begin with, noteworthy as somewhat of a coincidence that, in the same year (1803) and corner of England (Cornwall) which saw Colby so maimed for life by his unfortunate accident, Henry James was born. At the age of two-and-twenty he was posted to the Royal Engineers, and a couple of years later (1827) joined the National Survey. He remained on the Survey, devoting himself to his duties,
- ↑ Sir George Biddell Airy.
