STATE GEOLOGICAL SURVEYS. 229 



stow an infallible talisman for striking oil, these attempts were in but 

 half a dozen instances successful. Is it wonderful that such crass 

 ignorance should have entailed ruin upon thousands ? Nothing but 

 the publication of exhaustive geological reports, continued year after 

 year, and printed both in full and summarized into short popular 

 forms, can save the community at large from the repetition of similar 

 follies. One single mining-fever costs the State more than all the ap- 

 propriations needed to discover and universally diffuse the truths of 

 geology. The ignorance spoken of above finds a parallel only in the 

 methods which were pursued in treating the crude petroleum after it 

 had been sent to market. The director of the principal chemical man- 

 ufactory in Western Pennsylvania informed the writer that they first 

 attempted to refine crude petroleum by throwing hundreds of pounds 

 of bergamot and other perfumes into it, to take away the smell. If 

 the reader says that this story is incredible, I can only repeat, " Yes, 

 it is incredible." 



It may be urged that few men are placed in such positions, or pro- 

 vided with such appliances, or possessed of sufficient leisure, to con- 

 tribute any thing of value to the general stock of geological knowl- 

 edge. But there are hundreds who would shrink from publishing a 

 lengthy article or reading a paper before a learned body, and yet are 

 acute reasoners and accurate observers, and whose abilities could be 

 made available by a good system of collecting and collating their frag- 

 mentary labors. I have met many school-teachers and pastors in 

 Switzerland whose parochial duties confined them to obscure valleys 

 among the mountains, and who still had found time to collect the fos- 

 sils, plants, and minerals, of their poverty-stricken hamlets, and to 

 make careful maps of the rock-strata. They did so for two reasons : 

 In the first place, the topographical map of General Dufour, on a scale 

 of 1 to 100,000, previously accomplished by national aid, rendered it 

 possible for them to locate their observations of strata, etc., with pre- 

 cision ; and, secondly, because their contributions were utilized by the 

 professors at Zurich, Bern, Geneva, and elsewhere, and incorporated 

 in their published geological reports. A State survey, so organized as 

 to make every intelligent school-teacher, every country-surveyor, every 

 civil and mining engineer, chemist, amateur or collector, one of its 

 working corps, would, we believe, do the work better, more cheaply, 

 and with vastly more benefit to the material and intellectual prosperity 

 of the State, than any present organization. This would be a school 

 of science indeed, unincumbered by the dead weight of expensive 

 school-buildings, whose laboratory and museum would cover every 

 square foot of the State's surface. 



