GEOLOGICAL INVESTIGATIONS IN MINNESOTA. 705 



certain public or widespread want for information, expressed in 

 correspondence, or in the public press, such as the demand for 

 information concerning the grasshopper plague and the ways and 

 means for alleviating the evil, the call for peat fuel on the wood- 

 less prairies, the ravages of insects injurious to horticulture, the 

 general belief in the existence of coal in the state, the demand 

 for authoritative statements founded on scientific data touching 

 the nature and extent of our forests, or the quality of our soils, 

 or the probability of brine for the manufacture of salt, or the 

 existence of the necessary conditions for artesian water or burn- 

 ing-gas, or the quality of our native building stones, or the 

 extent of iron ore deposits and their qualities, — these have all 

 been elements that have influenced the plans formed from year 

 to year. While answering these purposes as nearly as possible, 

 the survey has been rendered useful to numerous individuals by 

 private correspondence, preventing the useless expense of mis- 

 guided exploration in many instances, and directly influential in 

 promoting economic industry in every case where its aid was 

 solicited and its data could be employed. 



In this policy the usefulness of the survey has been brought 

 home to the people of the state, and they have come to regard 

 it as an indispensable adjunct to the university and to the pro- 

 gressive development of the state in its natural resources. This 

 course was politic as well as just. There was nothing more evi- 

 dent, when the survey began, than that it must have the confi- 

 dence of the people. The people then lived largely in the south- 

 ern and central portions of the state. The annual reports 

 embraced common, patent facts, and description cast in a semi- 

 scientific mould. As the survey became grounded in the good- 

 will of our own citizens, it was strengthened for doing more 

 advanced work, and at the same time it found a constituency 

 ready to welcome more scientific publications. It is highly 

 probable that if such a moderate course had not been pursued, 

 the legislature, instead of always manifesting a good-will and 

 determination to have the work well sustained, would have refused 

 the financial aid that has been asked of it, and the enterprise 



