ore of first quality occur immediately contiguous to the coal 

 which is required to smelt them. Lead ore has been fre- 

 quently found, it is true, but always in isolated lumps, obvi- 

 ously transported to the spot by hitman agency, and no more 

 indicative of a mine underground, than an Indian arrow- 

 head ploughed up in a cornfield, is of a deposit of flint be- 

 neath the soil. As for the gold and silver mines discovered 

 broadcast in especially the north-eastern counties of the 

 State, they all resolve themselves either into mines of the ore 

 of copperas, or into intentional frauds. Any one at all fa- 

 miliar with geology and mineralogy, will no more look for 

 metallic mines in the formations of Mississippi, than a whaler 

 would hunt for whales in the river whose name it shares. 

 Experience has in both cases, equally demonstrated the vani- 

 ty of such expectations. 



That " Mississippi is entirely an agricultural State " has 

 been so often said, as to be almost a truism. It would, nev- 

 ertheless, seem to require further demonstration, with not 

 a few the same who imagine that all the meaning and ob- 

 ject of a Geological Survey is the discovery of mines. Its 

 most important bearing, that an agriculture and the arts im- 

 mediately connected with it, is not very generally appreciated ; 

 and still less is the fact, that the benefits which may be ex- 

 pected to accrue to those all-important branches of industry, 

 through the agency of a work of this kind, cannot, for the 

 greater part, be realized until it shall have been carried on, 

 if not to completion, at least to a very advanced stage of 

 progress. 



It is not a difficult matter to recognize a metallic ore ; to 

 determine its value, and the most successful mode of work- 

 ing a mine, is sometimes the work of a few minutes. But it 

 is not so with soils, the ores from which the agriculturalist 

 extracts his precious materials ; or with natural manures, 

 which may serve to sustain the fertility of his soil. While 

 the useful minerals are comparatively few and simple, soils 

 are infinitely varied, and their action on vegetation exceed- 



