GEOLOGICAL SURVEY OF MISSOURI. 625> 



see the danger of the little wisdom which led his father to spend his living 

 vain attempt to obtain various precious minerals from deposits which the addi- 

 tional knowledge he has gained assures him are utterly worthless. It would pro- 

 tect him from the well meant but financially ruinous zeal of his father in mining 

 for coal, lead, ochres, and other ores, on the unsafe supposition that, because a 

 neighbor in the valley below him finds these in abundance, he will have equal 

 success by sinking a shaft to the same level. His interest in geology, excited by 

 the tangible illustrations his school furnishes for study, would enable him to see, 

 by a brief survey of the rocky strata which he can easily make, that the rocks 

 which his neighbor finds so productive dip away from him, or, by an upward 

 curvature of the earth's crust which formed the elevation on which he stands, 

 the wealth-bearing stratum was exposed on the surface to the action of frost and 

 flood, and has been completely washed away. It would enable him also to avoid 

 the useless expenditures of his father in boring for a bed of coal, even in a region 

 of coal, away down into rock-layers in or below which coal never was and never 

 will be found; and to show his father, from a simple examination of the kinds 

 and position of the strata beneath, that it would be useless to even start his drill 

 in the desired place in search of water. Such practical information as this, so 

 easily gained by any intelligent teacher or pupil when the proper opportunities 

 are afforded, would be of inestimable advantage to mining and farming interests. 



The popular impression, too, which this practical education would create, 

 of the value of scientific information in ordinary life, would go far toward secur- 

 ing more intelligent legislation on other points most intimately connected with 

 our material prosperity. Every farmer can make an estimate for himself of the 

 value of the crops annually destroyed by the ravages of insects throughout the 

 State. The most charitable estimate could not fall short of many millions of dol- 

 lars. Our former State Entomologist agrees with others that in one year Illinois 

 alone lost at least $73,000,000 from the destruction of corn and wheat by the 

 chinch-bug. " Bugologists " variously estimate that from one-tenth to one-half 

 of the $300,000,000 annually destroyed in the United States might and should 

 be saved. The amount thus saved, if devoted to missionary enterprise, would 

 soon convert the world. What should be saved each year in Missouri alone 

 would furnish an income of seven per cent on all the real estate within her bor- 

 ders, or an average annual income of $200 on every farm from one of three acres 

 up. It would build every year as much railroad for carrying agricultural products 

 as would reach twice the length of the State. A live farmer of Howard County 

 told me some years since, from his own standpoint and not from the scientific, 

 that C. V. Riley, while State Entomologist of Missouri, saved the farmers of his 

 own and adjoining counties $50,000 by a single item of advice concerning a single 

 destructive insect. Yet the State lost his services, prized everywhere else, in 

 their wise ! and economical! ! purpose to save $3,000. If we are losing at this 

 rate by stopping of the entomological survey, it is sincerely to be hoped that we 

 may make what amends we can by re-establishing the Geological Survey. 



For every reason that could be urged, it is emphatically desirable that all 



