102 THE JOURNAL OF GEOLOGY. 



premature, is not so injurious as when a survey like that of Mis- 

 souri, which has just reached maturity, and is in its most active 

 and useful stage, is suddenly discontinued. Great quantities of 

 unpublished information relating to many different subjects and 

 in various degrees of preparation are absolutely lost to the state, 

 for much of such information is necessarily too incomplete to be 

 published without further field work. It has been collected, how- 

 ever, at very considerable expense, and much of it, with a little 

 more time, would be ready to be published and would become 

 of lasting benefit to the state. 



By the premature abolishment of a survey, therefore, the 

 state loses not only the money actually invested in these unfin- 

 ished reports, but it loses the reports themselves, which are on 

 subjects in which almost every citizen in the state is either 

 directly or indirectly interested. More than this, in dispensing 

 with a state geologist and his staff, who for years have been 

 actively and intelligently fulfilling the functions of their offices, 

 the state also loses the benefit of the vast amount of general 

 experience in the region that they have acquired during their 

 investigations. If the survey is ever reorganized, the new 

 officials must not only acquire the same experience over again, 

 at the expense of the state, but they must also collect again the 

 facts lost on the discontinuance of the preceding survey. 



The history of many states shows that several times they 

 have organized surveys and then abolished them before the work 

 was completed, or even fairly started ; and that perhaps years 

 later they have organized new surveys. In some cases this pro- 

 cedure has been repeated so many times that the advantages 

 gained have cost the state immensely more than they would 

 have done if the first survey had been continued to completion. 

 Missouri itself has had several such experiences, and the friends 

 of the state had hoped, when the present survey was inaugurated, 

 that it would be continued until all its great geological and min- 

 ing resources had been fully investigated. 



In a number of cases, in times of financial depression, state 

 legislatures have been obliged to curtail their expenditures ; and 



