IOWA ACADEMY OF SCIENCE 
67 
presented. It must also be borne in mind that the determination of the economic 
problems which must ever be kept in view as the end sought after in this 
Survey is an impossibility without the preliminary determination of questions 
relating to the genesis and order of succession of the geological strata.” 
The Survey has been under the general direction and control of Professor 
Calvin throughout the twenty years since its establishment, until his death 
a little more than a year ago, with the exception of about two years beginning 
in 1904 and running into 1906, when upon the resignation of Prof. Calvin, Prof. 
Prank A. Wilder, Calvin’s assistant at the University, was chosen State Geol- 
ogist. Calvin’s object in giving up the leadership in the Survey was to secure 
the needed leisure for the preparation of monographs on the stratigraphy and 
palaeontology of the state, but which were never completed since Prof. Wilder’s 
plans were changed and he removed from the state and Calvin resumed the 
headship of the Survey. 
The heavy loss sustained by the state and the scientific public at large through 
the death of Prof. Calvin was greatly augmented by the failure of the com- 
pletion of these subjects by one whose peculiar fitness for such work lay in 
his natural qualifications as well as in a most intimate and complete knowledge 
of them growing out of almost a lifetime’s interest in and observation upon 
them. 
In accordance with the plans formed at the outset, the county was made 
the unit in getting at a full and accurate acquaintance with the various aspects 
of the geology of the state and special assistants have been employed upon detail 
county work and their reports have been published from time to time until 
at the present only fourteen counties remain to be reported upon and the field 
work in at least half of those has been done wholly or in part. In addition to 
the county work, special subjects of economic importance have been- assigned 
to those within or outside the state who have been recognized as experts in 
those subjects. Twenty volumes in all have been issued, some of which have 
been devoted almost wholly to the reports on counties, none of which have been 
void of economic interest. A mere enumeration of the various subjects con- 
sidered in the other volumes would be of little value at this time, yet my sub- 
ject demand^ that they should have some consideration at our hands. The first 
volume contains a 250 page index of the Bibliography of Iowa Geology up to 
the time of its preparation, 1892, and an annotated catalogue of the minerals 
of the state by Keyes. The same writer devotes 130 pages to the geological 
formations of the state as they were then understood. A careful comparison 
of their character, extent and location as then given, with a similar account 
that might be given now would readily show how much has been accomplished 
in the intervening years in this single direction. Other papers on special topics 
were by Calvin, Beyer, Bain and Houser. The second volume, by Keyes, was 
devoted wholly to Coal, under such heads as Origin of Coal, Carboniferous 
Basin of the Mississippi Valley, General Geology of the' Coal Region, Lithology 
of the Coal Measures, Stratigraphy of the Coal Measures, the Coal Beds, Com- 
position of Iowa Coals, Waste in Coal Mining, and Extent of Coal Industry. 
Coming so early in the history of the Survey and covering so clearly and fully 
one of the most important industries of the state, this volume has been one 
of the most profitable and satisfactory of the entire series and yet the develop- 
ment of the subject in the succeeding years gave ample excuse for a fuller and 
