Memoir of the Life of Major-General Colby, Together with a Sketch of the Origin Und Progress of the Ordonance Survey of Great Britain and Ireland; By (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1869 edition. Excerpt: ...sheets which they have published, I do not think you can go in map-making beyond that.-A map which is really well engraved, as the modern maps of the Survey of England really are, are chefs d'oeuvre of engraving as well as of drawing, exquisitely drawn and engraved." And Sir R. Murchison said, --"I beg to express my most decided conviction that they produce nothing on the continent equal to our best maps, as recently published in this country by our own Ordnance Survey, of which I lay what I consider a beautiful example before the committee, of a part of Wales, which I think so perfect a delineation of the country that nothing more can be called for." Unquestionably in this branch of the work he availed himself of the careful inspection of Lieut.Colonel Mudge and of Lieut.-Colonel Dawson; and as regards the Maps of Wales, of the great artistic talents of Lieut.-Co1onelDawson's respected father Mr. Dawson; but in this, as in every other improvement, his mind expanded to the full range of requirements which a great national work demanded, and enabled him to appreciate and encourage, as well as to direct, the talents of others in securing them. In the Irish Survey this great faculty of General Colby was still more strikingly exhibited, and will be traced through the several stages of that work which may be emphatically called his own; as he not only planned the system on which it has been so successfully accomplished, but even invented the most im portant of the instruments, the compensation bars for measuring bases, which were then for the first time employed. But before closing this: record of patient endurance, of steady perseverance, and of unparalleled activity and energy, in order to study the high...