I fixed up some geometry on an object that already had a surface assigned to it.

I deleted some polygons and then did a bridge operation to fill the missing section. However the new geometry hasn't inherited the surface from the surrounding mesh.

I want to be able to copy and paste the original surface onto this newly created geometry, so that
the complete mesh is all the same surface assignment.

How is that done (sorry, I haven't really looked into surfacing at all as I've been concentrating on
modeling)?