PREFACE. 
XT 
USES OF THE SURVEY. 
The benefits of a geological survey have come to be recognized in all 
civilized communities. They are two-fold, positive and negative. In 
this state they are seen in the discovery and development of mineral 
wealth,— coal, iron, copper, &c.. in preventing or diminishing wasteful 
and ill-advised and ruinous enterprises. Several single mines, — of cop- 
per, of iron and of coal, whose development is due to the operations of 
the Survey have brought into the state an amount of capital many times 
greater than the whole cost of the work. More than a million dollars, 
for example, has been invested in four or five such mines within the last 
three or four years, and only a beginning has been made. And I make 
no doubt that in the repression and prevention of mistaken adventures, 
the pecuniary value of the work has been still more important. And 
many who live in the eastern section of the state will readily under- 
stand that the most important function of the Survey is found in the di- 
rection of agriculture : — the saving to the farmers of that section in one 
year in the matter of commercial fertilizers alone is counted by hundreds 
of thousands; without mentioning the direct benefits, from the analysis 
of marls, peats, &c., and the extension and direction of their use. And 
the educational value of the work is greater than can easily be stated ; 
and the influence on immigration and the general influx of business, 
capital, and the better class of population is far greater and wider and 
subtler than is commonly imagined. 
SURVEYS OF OTHER STATES. 
For the information of those who think the work expensive, the fol- 
lowing facts are given by way of showing the comparative cost of 
similar work in some of the other States. 
The great surveys of New York, Massachusetts and Pennsylvania, 
with their magnificent folios of reports, are matters of world-wide note. 
The latter state has just entered on a new survey with an annual appro- 
priation of $35,000, and has a corps of twenty geologists at work, under 
the directorship of Dr. J. P. Lesley, one of the ten geologists of the 
former survey. The state of Ohio expends about $20,000 per annum on 
her survey, and has eight or ten assistants, under Dr. J. S. Newberry as 
Chief. And in addition, the cost of publishing the first volume of the 
report was $82,000, and an appropriation of $60,000 was made to cover 
the expense of publishing the second volume. The cost of the entire 
work, in about four and a half years, was $256,000. 
