256 SPARKS FROM A GEOLOGIST'S HAMMER. 



manufacture salt. Michigan became a state in 1835, and 

 in 1836 seventy-two sections of salt-spring lands were 

 patented to the state by the general government.* A 

 geological survey of the state was instituted by act of the 

 legislature, aj^proved February 23, 1837. Douglass Hough- 

 ton, M.D., was appointed State Geologist, and his first 

 report was dated January 22, 1838. f One of the first 

 objects contemplated by the legislature which organized 

 the survey, as well as by the superintendent himself, was 

 the determination of precise facts in reference to the 

 value and distribution of the salt springs of the state. 

 Accordingly, about two-thirds of the State Geologist's First 

 Annual Report was devoted to an exposition of the results 

 of his observations upon the brine springs of the state, 

 made during the previous year. He found the salines 

 of the state distributed in five groups: first, those upon 

 the Grand Eiver, near Grand Rapids ; second, those on 

 Maple River, in Gratiot county; third, those on the Titta- 

 bawassee, in Midland county; fourth, those of Macomb 

 county; fifth, those on the Saline River, in Washtenaw 

 county. No saline indications of importance were known 

 south of a line drawn from Monroe to Grand Rapids. 

 Dr. Houghton gave analyses of twenty samples of brine 

 from as many different localities within the peninsula. 

 These localities were sjenerallv on marshes, circumstanced 

 similarly to the salines of New York, or on the imme- 

 diate banks of streams subject more or less to overflow. 

 As the result of the observations of this year, Dr. Hough- 

 ton advanced the opinion that the brine supplied at the 

 surface, at any of the localities examined, would prove 

 too weak and too limited in quantity to justify the expec- 

 * Act of Congress, June 23, 1836. t House Documefits, pp. 276-316. 



