GEOLOGICAL AND NATURAL HISTORY SURVEYS. 253 



ment, cases, maps, and apparatus of that department. The snino 

 fund also placed several hundred dollars' worth of hooks in the 

 general library of the university. 



2. The salt spring lands of the State were saved from being grad- 

 ually devoured by such enterprises as the Belle Plaine Salt Com- 

 pany, and were appropriated, through the direct interposition of the 

 survey at a critical juncture, to the prosecution of this fiir-reaching 

 public enterprise. 



3. On the discovery after a laborious investigation of the official 

 records of the fact that the State was still entitled to a large addi- 

 tional amount of land under the original grant, the initial efforts of 

 the survey were successful in obtaining from the United States about 

 15,000 acres of indemnity lands, which liave since been devoted by 

 the legislature to the support of the survey. 



4. The general museum of the university is one of tlie tangible 

 beneficial results of the survey. 



5. There was a widespread belief among the citizens of the 

 southern part of the State, prevalent when the survey began, that 

 workable coal of the age of that found in Iowa could be discovered 

 by making the proper exploration, and individuals had incurred 

 considerable expense on such efforts looking for it. One of the 

 first efforts of the survey was to settle this question; and the pub- 

 lished result of such investigation went far toward stoj^ping further 

 useless expenditure of money. 



6. The agitation of this subject by unscrupulous prospectors and 

 well drillers culminated in a proposed law, which was introduced 

 in the legislature of 1877 (?) offering a reward of $20,000 for the 

 discovery in the State of " coal " in workable quantities. This law 

 was so drawn that it did not discriminate as to the age or the quality 

 of the coal to be discovered ; and anyone familiar with the Cretaceous 

 lignites of the State could have made a legitimate demand for the 

 reward within 60 days after the adjournment of the legislature. 

 Through the agency and advice of the State geologist this law was 

 adversely reported by the committee having it in charge. It is only 

 on the principle that " a penny saved is 2 pence gained " that this 

 can be claimed as one of the tangible effects of the survey. 



7. A similar law ordering the appointment of a "commissioner on 

 peat," at a salary of $2,000 a year, was also defeated in the State 

 legislature, largely through the influence of the survey, in 1874. 



8. A law ordering the donation of further subsidy to the Belle 

 Plaine Salt Company, and another for the investigation of the grass- 

 hopper plague, and another appointing a " State mineralogist," with 

 special reference to supposed great wealth of the State in gold and 

 f5ilver, each looking to the unguided expenditure of the revenues of 



