40 brooks: applied geology 



curve shows the total number of states, and the lower the per- 

 centage of total number which supported geologic surveys between 

 1826 and 1910. 



The very rapid increase in state surveys is all the more signifi- 

 cant when compared with the status of governmental surveys in 

 Europe. Though much geologic work was done in European 

 countries during the early part of the century, it was not until 

 about the middle, that the governments began organizing sys- 

 tematic surveys. England led by establishing her survey in 

 1832. Next came surveys of Austria-Hungary and Spain, organ- 

 ized in 1849, of Bavaria in 1851, and France in 1855. Most 

 European countries did not undertake systematic geologic surveys 

 until about 1860, or more than twenty years after our first maxima 

 of state surveys had been reached. 



As already indicated, the principal influence that led to this 

 first era of state surveys, as Doctor Merrill has called it, was the 

 wide-spread interest in scientific investigations and the great 

 industrial advancement which created a demand for the practical 

 results of such investigations. A good example of the faith the 

 people had in applied geology is found in the first geological sur- 

 vey made in Georgia, which was paid for by land owners of two 

 counties— a condition that has never been repeated until recently 

 in some of the rich mining districts of the west. 



Another reason for the large number of state grants for geologic 

 work lay in the general westward movement of population from 

 the Atlantic states. This had a two-fold effect on geologic 

 surveys. First it gave rise to a demand for information about the 

 new lands, and second, it put the older states on their mettle to 

 hold their population. So rapid was the westward movement 

 that the Atlantic states became alarmed for their future. In 1815 

 and 1816 the legislatures of both North Carolina and Virginia 

 appointed committees to divise means for checking the drain on 

 their population. This was unquestionably the motive in estab- 

 lishing many of the eastern state surveys, and in directing their 

 activities toward agricultural problems. 



Meanwhile the federal government had undertaken the inves- 

 tigation of the resources of the unorganized western Territories. 



