Extract

The blank chart which accompanies this paper has been prepared by a Committee appointed by the British Association at Glasgow, in 1840, with a view to the collection and preservation of a regular series of sections of railway cuttings, which, by their intersection of mineral districts or of rocks presenting any remarkable geological features, may afford useful information, and be worthy of being kept as geological and mining records.

An object apparently so easy of attainment, and of such obvious importance and utility, seems scarcely to require comment, and it would appear more surprising that it should in any case have been neglected, than that any arguments should be required to enforce its general observance. The facts of the case, however, are a sufficient evidence that due attention has not hitherto been devoted to this interesting department of geology and engineering; for on many lines of railway no measures have been taken to preserve a regular and systematic record of the geological features presented during the progress of the works, and in other cases, where such details have been carefully measured and preserved, they have not been reduced to that uniformity of scale and colour which is indispensably necessary for an extensive series of sections of this description. To societies like the present, considerations of this kind cannot be too strongly urged or too often repeated, since it is only by the cooperation of numerous and influential parties that great public objects can be effected. At first sight, it may ...