GOVERNMENT GEOLOGICAL SURVEYS 199 



and the development of the Lake Superior region 

 was rapid. 4 



These land-classification surveys, with their definite 

 purpose, represent the best geologic work of the time. 

 The plan necessitated thoroughgoing field work with con- 

 siderable detail and prompt publication of systematic 

 reports, and in the working up of the results specialists 

 like James Hall and Joseph Leidy contributed, while 

 F. B. Meek was an assistant of Owen. It is worthy of 

 note that had not Doctor Houghton, the State geologist of 

 Michigan, met an untimely death in 1847, effective coop- 

 eration of the State Survey with the Federal officials 

 would have combined geologic investigation with the 

 execution of the linear surveys. 5 



Belonging to the same period of geologic exploration 

 was the service of J. D. Dana, as United States Geologist 

 on the Wilkes Exploring Expedition, the disaster to 

 which compelled his return from the Pacific Coast over- 

 land and resulted in his geologic observations on Oregon 

 and northern California. 



The military expeditions during the decade 1850-60 

 and the earlier expeditions of Fremont added to the 

 geographic knowledge of the Western country and also 

 contributed to geologic science, largely through collec- 

 tions of rocks and fossils, usually reported on by the 

 specialists of the day. Thus the names of Hall, Con- 

 rad, Hitchcock, and Meek appear in the published 

 reports on these explorations, while Marcou, Blake, 

 Newberry, Gibbs, Evans, Hayden, Parry, Shumard, 

 Schiel, Antisell, and Engelmann were geologists attached 

 to the field expeditions. In 1852 geologic investigation 

 was seemingly so popular as to necessitate the statutory 

 prohibition "there shall be no further geological survey 

 by the Government unless hereafter authorized by law." 



Certain of these explorations had a specific pur- 

 pose: several of them sought a practical route for 

 a transcontinental railroad; another a new wagon 

 road across Utah and Nevada; and one under 

 Colonel Pope, with G. G. Shumard as geologist, was 

 sent out "for boring Artesian Wells along the line 

 of the 32d Parallel" in New Mexico. The pub- 



