GEOLOGICAL INVESTIGATIONS IN MINNESOTA. 703 



TOTAL COST OF THE MINNESOTA SURVEY. 



Annual appropriations at the commencement of the survey, - $15,000.00 



Proceeds of the Salt Spring lands to July 31, 1888, - - 46,105.07 



Legislative appropriation, 1887, - - - - y - - 10,000.00 



" " 1891, ------ 15,000.00 



" " !893, ------ 10,000.00 



Proceeds of the Salt Spring lands from July 31, 1888, to July 



31, 1892, --------- 27,621.09 



Total, $123,726.16 



This covers the expenses of all departments of the survey, 

 which lately has been rendered more active in the lines of bot- 

 any, zoology, and topography than formerly. It also embraces the 

 expenses of the museum and the library, and includes $12,510.80 

 expended for the department of instruction in the university 

 prior to 1878. It does not cover the cost of publication of the 

 reports and bulletins. These are executive documents of the 

 state, emanating by law, from the State University, and their 

 publication is provided for by estimates for public printing which 

 are presented to each session of the legislature. 



The field work of this survey began in the southern counties 

 and progressed northwardly. But little technical work was 

 attempted at first, the aim being to render work done, as ex- 

 pressed in the reports, acceptable to the people of the state, and 

 thus to the legislature on whose good-will the firm establishment 

 of the enterprise depended. Quicker geological returns were 

 possible in the southern and central counties, which are princi- 

 pally of prairie and settled, than in the northern, which are 

 forested and were then largely in their primeval state. Still the 

 annual reports do not record a steady progress northward, but 

 embrace miscellaneous and often unclassified matter derived 

 from all parts of the state. They average about 250 pages 

 octavo, and have many illustrations. Twenty-two annual reports 

 have been issued. In 1884 the first volume of the "final report" 

 required by the law of the survey, was issued. It is a quarto of 

 700 pages and 43 plates. It embraced the work of about ten 

 years, so far as it could be made conformable with the plan of 



