234 BULLETIN 109, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM. 



Museum. — The law provided for the collection of geological and 

 mineralogical specimens to be deposited in the museums of the State 

 university, the agricultural college, and the normal school. 



Under Professor Wright's administration field work during the 

 season of 1885 " was confined chiefly to the north of township 48, and 



paying those debts of honor and courtesy which every survey has, in the nature 

 of things, to contract in procuring needful information of various parties pos- 

 sessing it, but which can not be paid for in money. This was especially the 

 case in the Marquette iron region, where there is no public record of mining 

 and prospecting operations, no former surveys of which much us.e could 

 be made, and where the small sum available for the work made it 

 impossible for the survey to do all that was required. The result was. 

 I was obliged to draw on the people and corporations interested and possessing 

 the knowledge for a large part of my material. One furnished analyses, an- 

 other private maps, others specimens, another history and statistics, others had 

 special surveys made at my instigation, and gave the entire results to the State 

 work. The result was the accumulation of 20 times more material (much of it 

 yet unpublished) than all that had been accumulated before on the subjects 

 embraced within the scope of the survey. There was manifestly but one way 

 to repay these parties: First, to give them full credit for the assistance in the 

 report, which I have endeavored to do in the introduction ; second, to present 

 them with a copy of the work which, as practically none were placed at my dis- 

 posal, was the business of the board, and to facilitate the work I gave them a 

 manuscript list of the parties named in the report, with their addresses (not 

 the larger list prepared at the request of the board), and have since, both in 

 letters and conversation, pointedly called their attention to the subject. 



At the end of a year many of these parties have not received the report or 

 any communication from the board on the subject, others have received the first 

 volume and atlas, the second volume, which relates exclusively to the iron 

 region, being withheld: others have only received the reports as the result of 

 special effort on their part and mine to procure copies for them. Others, in 

 answer to their communications, have been told they could have the work for 

 $15, which they have bought. Others have had no notice whatever taken of 

 their communications on the subject, being placed in this regard in the same 

 category with the State geologists, I siteak by the card on all these points. 

 In short you seem to have paid no attention whatever to the obligations of the 

 State to these parties. I trust she does not mean to repudiate any part of this 

 debt. For the time being I am placed in a very awkward position toward these 

 people, having acted as agent in securing the loans. 



Those parties who liave received the reports have not done so in virtue of 

 having been mentioned by me. but because they accidentally came within the 

 scope of your plan of distribution — whatever that may be. 



I know that immediately on its publication complete copies were sent to 

 every newspaper in Michigan, With but half a dozen exceptions, those papers 

 are not read by people who have the slightest interest in the mines of the Upper 

 Peninsula, while the newspapers and periodicaks, east and west, which are read 

 by those who own and administer the mines, and consume the ore, have never 

 seen or heard of the work. One of these editors sold his copy to a Michigan 

 furnace superintendent, who conld not get one for $5, Another prominent Lake 

 Superior mining man was presented witli a copy by a " crossroad " politician, or- 



