222 Memoir of Dr. Douglass Houghton. 
great value of such accurate geological and topographical surveys 
as the one in which he was engaged, and to demonstrate the 
practicability of carrying them on in connection with the ordina- 
ry linear surveys of the public lands, without increasing the ex- 
penditures of the government for surveying more than half a 
cent per acre, even ina rough and thickly wooded country like 
that on Lake Superior.” 
“The additional information which such surveys would give,” 
geology and mineralogy. his favorite studies. 
At the session of the legislature of Michigan, next succeeding 
the untimely death of Dr. Houghton, a joint committee of both 
prosecuted by him,” they say it. was one. “ which at little addi- 
tional expense over that of the ordinary surveys of the United 
States, combines, by the simplest and cheapest means, all the ad- 
vantages of the immensely expensive surveys by triangulation 
and instrumental observations, carried on by many of the govern- 
ments of Europe.” 
The vast amount of information returned to the office of the 
information, is enabled, from any desirable point, to trace the 
boundaries and extent of the several formations, the course 
acter of veins, and to connect all these details with other 
matter of general ical. interest. The difference between 
