IMPROVEMENT OF MISSOURI RIVER AT KANSAS CITY IN 1880. 643 
possessing a wider scope than ordinary geological surveys, should determine the 
kind of trees best adapted to different portions of the State. 
Kansas has the greatest possibilities for good and liabilities for evil. The 
first can only be developed, and the latter averted by a knowledge of her resources 
and capacities resulting from a thorough scientific exploration. Such a survey 
would pay in a thousand ways. In prosecuting her geological survey, Michigan 
discovered her immense deposits of salt, which yield a revenue to the State annually 
of half a million dollars. And yet Illinois prosecuted her geological survey at 
an expense only of five thousand dollars a year, as such a survey calls forth almost 
an equal additional amount from benevolently disposed individuals and from the 
‘courtesies of railroad companies. Kansas cannot delay any longer her geological 
survey without great injury to the State. Nothing could grace the new wing of 
the Capitol building so well asa full collection representing the minerals and rocks, 
the fossils, animals and plants, of the State. Sucha collection would present an 
irresistible attraction, and afford the materials for a thorough knowledge of the 
resources of the State which Kansas does not now possess. 
IMPROVEMENT OF THE MISSOURI RIVER AT KANSAS CITY, MO., 
1880. 
The imperative necessity of checking the erosive action of the river in the 
bend above the city of Wyandotte, which so seriously threatened the safety of 
the Kansas City bridge and the levee front of this city, was brought to the notice 
of the government engineers in the fall of 1878. The Representative from this 
district placed the matter before Congress, which appropriated thirty thousand 
dollars for works of improvement designed to prevent the river from leaving 
Kansas City, with its bridge, inland. The appropriation became available in 
April, 1879, and work was immediately begun, in accordance with a plan laid 
out by Major C. R. Sutes, Corps of Engineers, U. S. A. The amount given 
being less than one-third what was asked to complete the work, and which it was 
contemplated should be expended in one year, it became necessary that the 
money be expended in constructing works of protection, leaving those of control 
to be completed at some future time. 
The work done consisted in the construction of a ‘‘ weed dyke,” 650 feet 
long, and a continuous brush mattress, 5,042 feet long and 92 feet wide, with a 
thickness of about 6 inches—both devices being modifications, or improvements 
of such as had been used successfully in the rivers of India. These were built 
on the left bank above Wyandotte. The first was designed to deflect the course 
of the river, while the last, being laid along the bank, was intended to prevent 
further cutting. With their completion the appropriation was expended, and 
work suspended. 
