Page:Petty 1851 The Down Survey.djvu/19

 among the papers of the old Surveyor-General's office, in the Record Branch of the Office of the Paymaster of Civil Services in Ireland. Also, from the same valuable depository, an example of the descriptive part of each of those works, and of the Strafford Survey, from a rare volume of MS. Collectanea, preserved and arranged by the zeal and care of the present keeper of those records, W.H. Hardinge, Esq.; and, for comparison with them, a reference-sheet of the Down Survey. The Maps of that work are too well known to render any illustration of them necessary. It is known, also, how extensively they suffered from the fire which destroyed the Council Office, and Surveyor-General's office, in 1711, when the greater part of the contents of those depositories were consumed or lost. Their present condition, and the extent to which they were preserved from the conflagration, with the restoration of the barony maps, by copies made by General Vallancey, are fully detailed in the Supplement to the Third Report of the Irish Record Commissioners. Since these documents have been placed in their present location in the Custom House, several additional manuscript volumes, and fragments of maps and papers, have been collected and arranged by Mr. Hardinge; so that all which now remains of the great work of Dr. Petty is easily accessible, and, being in an insulated stone building, is practically secure from similar accident for the future.

In the Appendix it has also been thought desirable to print copies from several papers relating to the Survey, subsequently to the Restoration, which occur, with many others of the same date, in a series of manuscript volumes in the Record Tower of Dublin Castle, under the care of Sir William Betham. These volumes are described by Mr. Groves, in the Appendix to the Fifteenth Annual Report of the Irish Record Commissioners.

In the College copy of this manuscript there is a memorandum, in the handwriting of Mr. Weale, detailing the contents of the volume,