GOVERNMENT GEOLOGICAL SURVEYS 195 



was his work in the lead region which served to make him 

 a member of the Cass expedition sent out by the Secre- 

 tary of War in 1820 to examine the metallic wealth of the 

 Lake Superior region. The earlier Government explora- 

 tions of Lewis and Clark, in 1803-7, and of Pike, in 1805-7, 

 were so exclusively geographic that geologic work under 

 Federal auspices must be regarded as beginning with 

 Schoolcraft and with Edwin James, the geologist of the 

 expedition of Major Long in 1819-20 to the Rocky Moun- 

 tains. Both these observers published reports that are 

 valuable as contributions to the knowledge* of little- 

 known regions. 



Any description of geologic work under the Federal 

 Government that included no reference to the State 

 surveys would be inadequate, for in both date of 

 execution and stage of development the work of the State 

 geologists must be given precedence. In Merrill's Con- 

 tributions to the History of American Geology, 2 whose 

 modest title fails even to suggest that this work not only 

 furnishes the most useful chronologic record of the 

 progress of the science on the American continent but is 

 in fact a very thesaurus of incidents touching the per- 

 sonal side of geology, the author by his division of his 

 subject shows that four decades of the era of State sur- 

 veys elapsed before the era of national surveys began. 



Thus the geologic surveys of some of the Eastern 

 States antedate by several decades any Federal organ- 

 ization of comparable geologic scope, and in investiga- 

 tions directed to local utilitarian problems these pioneer 

 geologists working in the older settled States of the 

 East were in fact already conducting work as detailed in 

 type as much of that attempted by the Federal geologists 

 of the later period. Even to-day it is true in a general 

 way that the State geologist can and should attack many 

 of his local problems with intensive methods and with 

 detail of results that are neither practicable nor desirable 

 for the larger interstate investigations or for examina- 

 tions in newer territory. All this relation of State and 

 Federal work must be looked upon as normal evolution- 

 ary development of geologic science in America. 



One who reads the names of the Federal geologists of 

 the early days, beginning with Jackson and Owen and 



