Having completed these large triangles, a detailed survey of the baronies, parishes, and townlands of each county followed. The field books were sent to the central station at Mountjoy, and sketched, engraved on copper, and printed there. The first county published was Derry, in 1833, and now the townland survey is finished, and all the counties have now been engraved and issued, except Limerick, Kerry, and Cork.
The Survey has also engraved a map of Dublin City on the enormous scale of five feet to a statute mile. This map represents the shape and space occupied by every house, garden, yard, and pump in Dublin. It contains antiquarian lettering. Every house, too, is numbered on the map. One of its sheets, representing the space from Trinity College to the Castle, is on sale, as we trust the rest of it will be.
Two other sets of maps remain to be executed. First—maps of the towns of Ireland, on a scale of five feet to a mile. Whatever may be said in reply to Sir Denham Norrey's demand for a survey of holdings in rural districts does not apply to the case of towns, and we, therefore, trust that the holdings will be marked and separately valued in towns.
The other work is a general shaded map of Ireland, on a scale of one inch to the statute mile. At present, as we elsewhere remarked, the only tolerable shaded map of Ireland is that of the Railway Commission, which is on a scale of one inch to four statute miles. Captain Larcom proposes, and the Commission on the Ordnance Memoir recommend, that contour lines should be the skeleton of the shading. If this plan be adopted the publication cannot be for some years; but the shading will have the accuracy of machine-work instead of mere hand skill. Contours are lines representing series of levels through a country, and are inestimable for draining, road-making, and military movements. But though easily explained to the eye, we doubt our ability to teach their meaning by words only.
To return to the townland or six-inch survey. The names were corrected by Messrs. Petrie, O'Donovan, and Curry, from every source accessible in Ireland. Its maps contain the county, barony, parish, townland, and glebe boundaries, names and acreage; names and representations of all cities, towns, demesnes, farms, ruins, collieries, forges, limekilns, tanneries, bleach-greens, wells, etc., etc.; also of all roads, rivers, canals, bridges, locks, weirs, bogs, ruins, churches, chapels; they have also the number of feet of every little swell of land, and a mark for every cabin.
Of course these maps run to an immense number. Thus, for the county of Galway there are 137 double folio sheets, and for the small county of Dublin, 28. Where less than half the sheet is covered with engraving (as occurs towards the edges of a county) the sheet is sold, uncoloured, for 2s. 6d.; where more than half is covered the price is 5s.
In order to enable you to find any sheet so as to know the bearings of its ground on any other, there is printed for each county an index map, representing the whole county on one sheet. This sheet is on a small scale (from one to three miles to an inch), but contains in smaller type the baronies and parishes, roads, rivers, demesnes, and most of the information of general interest. This index map is divided by lines into as many oblong spaces as there are maps of the six-inch scale, and the spaces are numbered to correspond with the six-inch map. On the sides of the index maps are tables of the acreage of the baronies and parishes; and examples of the sort of marks and type used for each class of subjects in the six-inch maps. Uncoloured, the index map, representing a whole county, is sold for 2s. 6d.
Whenever those maps are re-engraved, the Irish words will, we trust, be spelled in an Irish and civilised orthography, and not barbarously, as at present.
It was proposed to print for each county one or more volumes, containing the history of the district and its antiquities, the numbers, and past and present state and occupations of the people, the state of its agriculture, manufactures, mines, and fisheries, and what means of extending these existed in the county, and its natural history, including geology, zoology, etc. All this was done for the town of Derry, much to the service and satisfaction of its people. All this ought to be as fully done for Armagh, Dublin, Cork, and every other part of Ireland.
The commissioners recommend that the geology of Ireland (and we would add natural history generally) should be investigated and published, not by the topographical surveyors nor in counties, but by a special board, and for the whole of Ireland; and they are right, for our plants, rocks, and animals are not within civil or even obvious topographical boundaries, and we have plenty of Irishmen qualified to execute it. They also advise that the statistics should be entrusted to a statistical staff, to be permanently kept up in Ireland. This staff would take the census every ten years, and would in the intervals between the beginning and ending of each census have plenty of statistical business to do for parliament (Irish or Imperial) and for public departments. If we are ever to have a registry of births, deaths (with the circumstances of each case), and marriages, some such staff will be essential to inspect the registry, and work up information from it. But the history, antiquities, and industrial resources, the commissioners recommend to have published in county volumes. They are too solicitous about keeping such volumes to small dimensions; but the rest of their plans are admirable.