REPORT 
Of Dr. Lewis C. Beck, on the Mineralogical and 
Chemical Department of the Survey. 
To His Excellency William H. Seward, 
Governor of the State of New-Yorli. 
Sir— 
I beg leave to submit the following report from the department 
of the Geological Survey which has been committed to my care. Per- 
mit me to state, however, that in order to comply with your request 
that it should be forwarded by the first of January, instead of Febru- 
ary as heretofore, I have been obliged to omit some notices which 
would otherwise have been introduced. Among others I may mention 
those concerning the soils and mineral-manures of the State, a subject 
of great practical importance, and in regard to which I have collected 
many facts and made sundry analyses, but which I ha,ve not had time 
to prepare for publication, 
I commenced active operations under my appointment as mineralo- 
gist and chemist to the Survey, about the first of July 1836. During 
that season I visited several of the most important mines of iron, lead 
and other metallic minerals, and the results of my observations were 
communicated in my first annual report. In the spring and summer of 
1837, I visited several of the more important mineral springs, and be- 
fore the close of the year completed the chemical analysis of many of 
these waters ; a summary of the whole being given, with a table of 
our springs, in the second report. My time thus far having been 
almost exclusively occupied in the subjects above stated, I thought it 
proper to devote the principal part of the year 1838, to the examina- 
tion of our other mineral productions and the collection of specimens 
of them for the use of the State. In addition to this, several of our 
