116 PROCEEDINGS OF THE INDIANA ACADEMY OF SCIENCE. 



thereby. The Governor shall have 2.000 copies of said report printed for the 

 use of the next General Assembly. 



Here will be seen again the demand of the law makers that the impossible 

 be performed, viz., the making of a complete survey of the State and the 

 analj^zing of an unlimited number of ores, minerals and soils for $5,000. 



In accordance with the instructions of the Act the State Board appointed 

 Dr. D. D. Owen for a second time as State Geologist and instructed him "to 

 commence a thorough survey of the coal fields of Indiana as early in the spring 

 as the weather will permit, and to procure the necessarj' outfit either by pur- 

 chase or hire as may seem to him best, having a strict regard to economy."* 

 Since his former connection with the Indiana Survey, Dr. Owen had, as we 

 have noted, serv^ed the United States as Geologist of the Northwest Territory, 

 and had also served as State Geologist of Kentucky and Arkansas. 



Dr. Owen appointed his brother, Richard Owen, as chief assistant, Dr. 

 Peter of Lexington, Kentucky, as chemical assistant, Leo Lesquereux as 

 Paleontologist and Joseph Lesley of Philadeli)hia as topographer. He 

 wrote a general statement for the final report and a condensed report on the 

 first year's work to the State Board of Agriculture, but when the survey was 

 (mly partly finished he died of malarial fever at New Harmony, Indiana, on 

 November 13, 18()0. Of him W. T. D(>nnis, Secretary of the State Board of 

 Agriculture wrote: "The death of Dr. D. D. Owen is a public calamity, 

 widely felt and deeply deplored, oc<'urring as it did just at the time of the 

 prei)arati(m of his detailed report of the entire operations of the survey. 

 * * * He was known to be a prodigy of scientific learning, an excellent 

 chemist, a thorough mineralogist, a good civil engineer and as a geological 

 surveyor had no equal. * * He possessed the best geological collection in 

 the western country, and in him Indiana lost her most solid man of Science." J 



The geological collection mentioned had as its nucleus a large portion of 

 that extensive collection of minerals and fossils left by Wm. McClure. To this 

 Dr. Owen had added by piu-chase and collecting until it contained 85,000 

 specimens. The entire collection was sold for $25,000 some years after Owen's 

 death, to Indiana University, and was almost wholly destroyed in 1883 when 

 the mu.seum, laboratory and library of that institution were burned. 



The result of the work done in 1850 and 1800, under the supervision of 

 David Dale Owen and later under that of his successor, Richard Owen, was 

 published by the State in 1862, under the title "Report of a Geological Re- 

 connaissance of Indiana made during the years 1859 and 1860, under the 

 direction of the late David Dale Owen, M. D., State Geologist, by Richard 

 Owen, Principal Assistant, now State Geologist." It forms a large octavo 

 volume of 368 pages, illustrated with wood cuts of a number of localities of 

 especial geologic interest in the State, and with two plates of Silurian and 

 Carboniferous fossils. In the condensed report submitted by David Dale 



♦Condensed Report of the Geol. and Agr. Survey ol the State of Indiana for 1859 

 and 1860, Doc. 5, Pt. II, II. J. 18G1. 

 JLoc. Cit. p. 105. 



