Abstract
THE presidential address of Sir Thomas Holland at the annual general meeting of the Geological Society on February 16 was mainly devoted to an examination of the organisation of the geological surveys of the British Empire and the United States. He emphasised the fact that the real object of every such survey is the mineral development of the country, scientific results being obtained as by-products and used as a means to attaining the economic object in view. The work of preparing a geological map requires the co-operation of various specialists of at least seven kinds. With a director and his assistant, a curator and a chemist, the minimum number of scientific officers required for a survey like that Of India, for example, is found to be about 21. Below this standard an organisation is scientifically inefficient and economically wasteful. The colonies separately might not be able, for financial reasons, to maintain this standard, but the difficulty could be partially met, as in the Federated Malay States, by a federation of officers in geographically related groups. Important functions of a survey are the classification of public lands and the compilation and analysis of mineral statistics. The director should be well acquainted with the trend of mineral development, watching imports for indications that the country might itself produce certain minerals and by-products. He should therefore be the adviser of his Government on questions of mineral policy, whether in purely economic matters or in the development and conservation of minerals that are essential for the production of munitions of war.
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Work of Geological Surveys. Nature 133, 410 (1934). https://doi.org/10.1038/133410b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/133410b0