GEOLOGICAL AND XATUKAJ, HISTORY SL'ilVEYS. 44H 



any new appointments he might have made, any advance of salary 

 to any aid or assistant, and his estimate of expenses for the quarter 

 in advance ; all of which was discussed and acted upon by the board 

 at their pleasure. The regular quarterly meetings were held at 

 Harrisburg: special meetings, on occasion, either there or in Phila- 

 delphia. No business could be transacted unless five commissioners 

 were present. Usually eight or nine and sometimes the whole board 

 assembled. On emergencies copies of needful acts were sent by 

 mail to each commissioner's home in advance of a meeting, and to 

 absentees after the meeting, to secure imanimity of action : the policy 

 of the board being to postpone consideration of all plans not unani- 

 mously apprqved, which accounts for the success of the survey. 



Both assistant geologists and aids Avere expected to devote them- 

 :^elves exclusively to the survey, and to have no private professional 

 business within the limits of the State. Eleven months of their time 

 each year were due to the survey for field and office work; the re- 

 maining montj^ was their own, as a vacation, salary paid as usual, 

 but no expenses. This they might and sometimes did employ, out- 

 side the State, in some professionally profitable way. No charge was 

 ever made to any citizen of the State for any geological, miner- 

 alogical, or chemical information which the survey could communi- 

 cate; nor was any verbal information withheld from any citizen 

 until publication; but all written information capable of being used 

 for trade purposes was forbidden. No fee was ever accepted from 

 any capitalist or company for taking up one line of survey in pref- 

 erence to another or out of its proper order. 



The survey had no connection, officially or unofficially, directly or 

 indirectly', with other institutions in the State, except in the one 

 particular that the State geologist was also the official geologist of 

 the State board of agriculture. 



In two cases the assistant geologist was a college professor, and 

 only served the survey during the field season, preparing his report 

 in the winter. Another assistant geologist vras elected in 1876 pro- 

 fessor in another college, and accepted the chair on condition that 

 he should have the freedom of the field season. The mineralogist of 

 the survey was a professor of chemistry in the University of Penn- 

 sylvania, and performed his duties to the survey in the laboratories 

 of the university, and was allowed (after 1875) an aid in said work. 

 The State geologist was himself professor of geology in the univer- 

 sity until 1878, when he resigned his chair to devote himself exclu- 

 sively to the survey. A number of the aids were graduates of his 

 department, and three of them became assistant geologists on the 

 survey. To this fact is partly ascribable its always excellent esprit 

 dv corps. 



