The Sun.
London, England, 1857-02-18 00:00:00

ORDNANCE SURF EY OF GREAT BRITAIN.

The following letter has been addressed to the Tina :
Sir,—ln your leading article of to-day on " the pecu-
niary incontinence of the House of Commons" you have
fallen into two mistakes in your observations on the Ord-
nance Survey of Great Britain, which I feel certain you
will be anxious to correct as soon as they are pointed out.
You say " the House of Commons has recently sanc-
tioned a survey of Scotland on the scale of five feet to a
mile," and that " it will give every Scotch proprietor, at
the public expense, a better map of his 1,000 or 2,000 acres
of moor than is possessed by any English gentleman who
has not gone to great expense for such a purpose."
Now, the facts are, first, as regards the scale of the plans
of the uncultivated districts, the Treasury minute and my
orders on this subject direct " that the Highland and other
partially-cultivated and thinly-populated districts shall be
drawn on the scale of six inches to a mile," which is only
linear measure, an
one-tenth of the scadleeentlayteodnien-htuhneaTrierth,
applied to the area of the ground.
. as applied to the
of that scale as
arrangements for the .
can obtain at great
better maps than the English
• 2. You say thattheeuSrcvoeyicohbptercinper:eattotrhnenpduebrltioheexppreenseenet,
• tland are proceeding pari passu, and under
Eng-
land and Scotland the fact proprietor
being that the surveys of personal expense,
similar ius.tructions, and although in a numerical
counties published in England and Scotland
on the largo scales the number. of. English counties appears
small, yet when it is borne in mind that Yorkshire alone,
the precisely
returnplanseise loyf
ofth whiche
twhiell engravedsbeeorsee
eaon. nf‘
tdehxpaput
expenditure
diasisht
uefdraer oain:ns
the six-inch scale, is equal in area to the counties of Edin•
burgh, Haddingtore Linlithgow, Fife, Wigton, Kirkend-
er than another, the English
oab
nut- ieyg
phlt
rj,
teAootyfi Ayr, and
Great
canaadnt
Bb
eiimtDumfries,aaind er a en
nht
have
pinsgotof
ecvoeinry m
complain of,
in Ireland have been long
since published on the six-inch scale
has never been questioned,
and m and their great value
The z°
mtha
many important measures
connected with the improvement of the country could not
be
Icarried
v enoout
desirewh it ot
ou trevive in your columns the discus'
.
civilised country ; the sub
*dons as to the best scales for the
of this any other
j
discussed inParliamentarycommittaeerse, and in both Houses
subject bastaalpsady been enorvery fully
of Parliament, and the opinions of the most eirdeentbanide
practical men conversant with the subject are Set forth
the published volume of Correspondence °lltheScale
themay
Survey, which has been laid before Parliament; s
making
observe that the scales now adopted
allowance for the difference of the
and Bavaria,
tries—which are adopted in France, Belgium,
by the Statistical
and are those which were recommended
an, ,may be allowed,
Congress held in Brussels in 1 i 8.51 'a a '
h great object in view--
to add that, having reference to
the means of facilitating
viz., the registration of proPty,
the valuation of property,
Ineasare.nrest of the eoun-
the transfer of landed
purposes,property,
-civil and military, including
gi i and hydrographical surveys, and all
and all engineering
• other purpose!) .
a__ adopted, as far as I can judge, after
• basis—the eealeenceew
geological
°which an accurate map is a necessary
in almost every eass of engineering
mining, the
1 a long
and
perfectly suited for the national survey.
Jed, are ther mistakes in. your observations on the
There are o
works, aenxd atter a very careful consideratioh of the sub-
, survey which I should- be happy to explain if I Could ren-

your apace. Such, for example, ure io far to trespass o n

as the statement That thecontoUrsa- re at every 25 yards ;
and as regards the survey of Lewis, although I cannot de-
fend the minute details of that portion of the survey,
which was made long before my appointment as superin-
tendent, the proprietor of that island, in paying a sum
towards the expense of the survey, on the condition that
it should be proceeded with at once, only followed the ex-
ample
of the gentlemen of Lincolnshire in so doing.
I have the honour to be, sir, your obedient servant,
HENRY JAMES,
Lieutenant-Colonel Royal Engineers, Superin•
tendent of the Ordnance Survey.
Ordnance Map-office, Southampton, Feb, 16,