122 PROCEEDINGS OF THE INDIANA ACADEMY OF SCIENCE. 



vegetable or animal, are found in it only in relatively small proportion, and 

 must be carefully husbanded and restored to it in order to maintain constant 

 fertility. Such a process as this, bj' Avhich the land would be constantly 

 kept up to the height of fertiUty and would annually yield abundant crops 

 without any diminution of its richness, would be the perfection of agriculture." 



In other words, if only a single element of a ])lant's food is absent from the 

 soil, that soil is baiTen as far as the growth of that particular plant is concerned. 

 For example, the muck soils of northern Indiana will not produce corn or 

 Avheat because they are deficient in potash. The work done by Owen and 

 Peter was the first serious effort of the State's scientific workers to show the 

 farmers of the State the value of a chemical analysis to determine what ele- 

 ment of plant food is lacking in their soils. Not one farmer in a hundred read 

 that report or paid any attention to its teachings. The legislators of that day 

 did not appreciate this chapter in Owen's work, and made no move toward 

 continuing the study of the soils of the State. As a consequence millions of 

 dollars have been spent in the GO years that have passed for fertilizers that 

 were worthless to the persons buying them because they did not contain the 

 constituent needed, and in almost every county thousands of acres of land 

 are left untilled or are tilled at a loss because of a lack of a certain element of 

 fertility which is unknown to the owner and therefore not supplied by him. 



The brief chapter on soils in the report of 1S02 is followed by one entitled 

 "Report on the Distribution of the Geological Strata in the Coal Measures 

 of Indiana," l)y Leo Lesquereux, the noted paleo-botanist of that period. 

 This was the first attempt to correlate and properly place the various coal 

 veins in difi'erent parts of the State by a study of the jilant remains in the coal 

 itself, or in its overlying or underlying strata. Prof. Lesquereux, whose home 

 was in Columl)us. Ohio, spent l)ut five weeks in the field. His paper of ap- 

 proximately .")0 i)ages was for a time regarded as i)robably of more scientific 

 \alue than any other in the report, but his conclusions have only in part been 

 adopted by more recent students of the coal geology of the State. 



When David Dale Owen in 1859 accepted the directorship of this second 

 Geological Survey, with its princely appropriation of $5,000 for all salaries 

 and expenses, he evidently assumed that if he could make a good showing 

 for the sum expended the next legislature would continue the Survey and 

 incrf^ase the appropriation. One of his day dreams, which is set forth in 

 several ])laces in his 1<S87 and 1838 reports and also in the condensed report 

 made in ISfK), was that a topographical survey would eventually be authorized 

 which in time would cover the entire State. Since not one legislator in twenty 

 Avould know the difference between a topographical map and a map of the 

 moon, he concluded to prepare for them an object lesson, and so employed 

 J. Leslej^ of Philadelphia to prepare a topographical map of a portion of Perry 

 County. In the brief report of Air. Lesley which accompanied the map, he 

 stated "that the cost of extending such a series of examinations over the whole 

 State of Indiana I estimate at $150 per toA\Tiship — field and office work in- 

 cluded." Of the map itself Richard Owen says: "The beautiful map executed 



