Among the contributors to the Exhibition were the Ordnance Survey, and Mr. Forbes, late sergeant-major of the corps. The Survey sent a number of artistic specimens of maps, one of which, Lancashire, was fifty feet in height and twenty-seven feet in width. A plan of the city of Dublin, on a scale of sixty inches to the mile, was the finest specimen of map engraving ever produced in the United Kingdom.[90] With this plan was associated the name of colour-sergeant John West, late of the corps, whose services have already received honourable mention in these pages. Among the other maps exhibited, which especially attracted attention, was one of the borough of Southampton, on a scale of six inches to a mile. For finished beauty of execution and truthful delineation of the various features of the ground, it was regarded as unrivalled. This specimen was executed by Charles Holland, formerly second-corporal in the corps, and who is still the leading draughtsman at the Ordnance Map office, Southampton. As already noticed in these pages, he received a case of instruments from Prince Albert for his talent in drawing a similar plan of Windsor. Six or seven specimens of electrotype, to illustrate the different stages of the process of engraving the copper-plates, were also exhibited. Sergeant Donald Geddes assisted in mounting the maps, which from the colossal dimensions of one of them, was found very difficult; and he also arranged the various specimens in the space assigned to them at the end of the western gallery. “The Council gold medal was granted to the Ordnance Department who exhibited the maps, as a just and honourable tribute to the meritorious and scientific officers of that department who prepared them.”[91] “For the copper-plate etchings, and for the use of the electrotype process in reproducing the plates, our eulogium,” say the Jurors, “is justly due to the establishment at Southampton, where they are executed.”[92] Sergeant Geddes had from the first the charge of the electrotype branch at Southampton, under the executive officers of royal engineers, Captain Yolland, and afterwards Captain W. D. Gosset; and by his skill and acquaintance with chemical science, attained that perfection in the art which, but a few years past, it would have been thought chimerical to expect. Mr. Forbes exhibited a beautiful model of his spherangular pontoon in raft, with all its stores complete, and waggon for carriage. He also contributed the model of an apparatus for the ventilation of mines. Both objects were inventions of his own, and the former, though not adopted in the service, gained for him the present of one hundred guineas from the Board of Ordnance. Mr. Forbes was very late in submitting the articles, and they have therefore not been included in the official catalogues. ----- Footnote 65: ‘Times,’ May 2, 1851. Footnote 69: First Report of Royal Commissioners, Exhibition, App. xxv., p. 128. Footnote 70: Ibid., App. vi., p. 50.