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merits' act, had already cost £300,000, or $1,500,000 ; yet a new 

 survey of this latter city is now in progress. With these data before 

 us, and an attentive study of the estimates of the Superintendent, it 

 is scarcely possible to doubt that the Coast Survey has been carried 

 on with all possible economy, consistent with its efficient prosecution. 



If it be asked, what results of a scientific or practical character 

 have accrued, or are likely to accrue, from this vast work, a hasty 

 glance at its progress will furnish an adequate answer. 



Accurate charts have already been published of the Bay of New 

 York, and of the Delaware Bay, and approaches of the City of Phi- 

 ladelphia, and of six other harbours ; and, of the former, one map 

 upon a large scale, occupying six sheets, and another in one sheet, 

 have been issued. Of some of these harbours, no maps of a trust- 

 worthy character were before in existence, and in all of them impor- 

 tant corrections have been made, new channels indicated, unknown 

 shoals pointed out, and the increase or decrease of the old ones mark- 

 ed: the soundings and nature of the bottom carefully noted, and 

 every information given which can be of service to vessels desirous 

 of entering. 



The plan adopted by the present Superintendent, of publishing the 

 results of the Survey as fast as the maps can be prepared, cannot be 

 too highly approved. There can be no reason why, after the work, 

 on a certain part of the coast, has been finished and verified, those 

 who are to benefit by its results should be kept waiting until the 

 whole of so vast a work as this can be completed: why the main 

 trade of our principal cities with Europe should continue subject to 

 the annual risk arising from insufficient maps, until the whole of the 

 shores of the Gulf of Mexico have been surveyed. 



The value of the publication of these maps has been materially 

 enhanced, too, by the liberal policy of the government, in allowing 

 them to be sold at such a low price as to put them within the reach 

 of all who may require them. By this judicious course, their intro- 

 duction in place of the insufficient and often treacherous guides which 

 they are to replace will be much more rapid, and they themselves, 

 being more widely disseminated, will be far more useful. 



Another practical benefit, of incalculable importance, which we 

 already owe to the efficient prosecution of the Coast Survey, is the 

 discovery of dangerous and sunken rocks and shoals, before un- 

 known, yet lying directly in the path of our principal trade. In ad- 

 dition to the discovery of a new channel into New York Bay, having 

 two feet more water than the old channels; of two new and impor- 



