13' 



reality, it is but just begun. What has thus far been done 

 a very general geological reeonuoisance of the State, and the 

 field-work of the special survey of six or seven counties, 

 would, in the hands of one competent and efficient officer, 

 properly equipped, have been the work of ten or twelve- 

 months in the field, when restricting his attention to the ob- 

 jects of ag eological and agricultural survey alone.* Had 

 the arrangement made by the Board of Trustees in 1856 re- 

 maine^ in force after the separation of the survey from the 

 University, so that a Principal and an Assistant, each prop- 

 erly equipped, could have jointly prosecuted the work, there 

 would have been a chance of reasonable progress : more es- 

 pecially when (as has been the case for some time,) it was 

 understood that, for the present at least, geology and agri- 

 culture were to be the sole objects of the survey, to the ex- 

 elusion of any more special pursuit of the less important , 

 though not less interesting branches of botany and zoology. 



But it is no more reasonable to charge a single person, no 

 matter how competent and efficient, with the execution of a 

 work like this, than it would be to employ a single work- 

 man to build a house. Every one knows what disadvanta- 

 ges the latter would be laboring under ; he might work a 

 lifetime, having to perform himself all the particulars of 

 making and laying brick, sawing lumber, splitting shingles, 

 etc.. and after all, the edifice will neither be as perfect as it 

 might have been made with very little assistance from others, 

 nor will it have been of any use until completed ; and what 

 is more, every one, and most of ail the workman himself, 

 would be out of patience with it. And no one would sup- 

 pose that the capital so employed had been profitably in- 

 vested. 



Now, the case of a geological and agricultural survey of 

 a State like Mississippi, is precisely analagous to that of the 

 house just cited. The labors required in its performance 



It must be borne in mind, that it is only during eight months of the year, at 

 farthest, that fluid-work is practicable even in the most favored parts of Mississippi. 



