GEOLOGICAL INVESTIGATIONS IN MINNESOTA. 699 



Hind had already announced such a hypothesis, but General 

 Warren mapped the area of the lake and assigned a cause for 

 the former drainage toward the south. 1 In 1871 Messrs. W. D. 

 Hurlbut and J. H. Kloos contributed to the geology of Minne- 

 sota, the former in the southern part of the state and the latter 

 in the northern. Their papers were published in the Minnesota 

 Teacher, although Mr. Kloos contributed an article, in 1872, 

 to the American Journal of Science, giving particulars of the 

 discovery of Cretaceous beds with lignite in the valley of 

 the Sauk River, adding palaeontological determinations by F. B. 

 Meek. 



Professor A. Winchell was appointed by Governor Horace 

 Austin in 1871 to make an examination of the vicinity of Belle 

 Plaine, in Scott county, where indications of brine were said to 

 exist. This was in accordance with an Act of the Legislature of 

 1870. The report was printed by the Legislature of 1872. It 

 gives a sketch of the geology of the region, including notes 

 on the drillings from the Belle Plaine well, and concludes that 

 probably brine does not exist at Belle Plaine, nor in the rocks 

 below. 



The present survey. — The law of the present survey was 

 approved by the governor, March 1, 1872. It is the first instance 

 in which a systematic survey has been placed by any state of the 

 Union, under the direction of the regents of the State Univer- 

 sity, with requirement to make constant examination and stated 

 reports. It has often happened that the professor of geology in 

 a state institution has been the state geologist, but in those 

 cases he has been directed by some other state board or by the 

 governor. The arrangement which prevailed in Alabama, dur- 

 ing the incumbency of Professor Tuomey, of the State University, 

 was in some respects similar, but it was not inaugurated at the 

 instance of the state legislature. It was an incident of his pro- 

 fessorship as ordered by the trustees, 2 and when it was recog- 



2 See the American Naturalist for November, 1868. 



2 E. A. Smith, Geological Surveys in Alabama. Journal of Geology, Vol. II., 

 P- 275- 



