PREFACE. 
HISTORICAL SKETCH. 
It is noteworthy that the first geological survey by public authority 
in America was made by the state of North Carolina. The first sug- 
gestion of such survey was made by Prof. Olmsted, of the State Uni- 
versity, in 1821, in a letter to the Board of Public Improvements. Judge 
Murphy, however, on the part of the said Board, had observed in their 
official report for 1819, that in executing the surveys which they were 
required to have made, in the prosecution of various schemes of internal 
improvement, they had ,4 attempted to render the surveys subservient to 
the interests of science by collecting information of the geology and 
mineralogy of the state,” but they had failed. 
The suggestion was renewed by Prof. Olmsted a year or two later, 
with the proposal to spend his vacations in geological excursions, and he 
asked “ merely such an appropriation as would defray the expenses 
of the undertaking.” The result was the passage of an act of Assembly 
in 1823, authorizing the Board of Agriculture to have such survey made, 
and appropriating for the purpose the sum of $250 a year for four years. 
The appropriation was afterwards renewed for two years. 
The survey thus ordered was partly executed by Prof. Olmsted, and 
after his removal to Yale Colloge, was continued by Dr. Mitchell. The 
published results consist of two reports of Prof. Olmsted, issued in 1S24 
and 1825, and a third on the Mineralogy of the state by his assistant, C. 
E. Rothe, of Saxony, and two reports, (1826 and 1827,) by Dr. Mitchell. 
A geological map of the eastern half of the state was also prepared by 
the former, but was never published, and has disappeared. 
The above geological reports are the first of the kind ever made in this 
country. They are of course very brief, amounting in all to not more 
than 250 pages, and from the necessity of the case, they relate exclusively 
to the middle and eastern regions of the state, chiefly the latter. 
Dr. Mitchell continued his explorations during his vacations, on his own 
private account, and gave a summary of the result in a text book for his 
classes, published in 181:2, with a small geological map of the state, the 
only one hitherto published. 
