Part I. Report of progress in 1869, by J. S. Newberry, chief geologist. Part II. Report of progress in the second district, by E. B. Andrews, assist. geologist. Part III. Report on geology of Montgomery County, by Edward Orton, assist. geologist.

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purposes of the speculator only, guiding him in his purchases and placing the farmer quite at his mercy. There are many who think the development of thp mineral resources of our State should be altogether left
to time and private enterprise; but no one who has watched with any
care the progress of events during the last twenty-five years, in this and
other States, will have failed to notice that it very rarely happens that
the owner of a farm containing coal, iron, clay, or any other useful mineral, will, of his own accord and at his own expense, have any or all of
his subterranean treasures so far investigated as to learn with accuracy
their value. To do this, he must invoke the aid of the geologist and
chemist, personages with whom he is not only unacquainted-since they
are probably residents of a distant city-but of whose professions he has
in all probability only a dim and shadowy idea. He therefore holds his
land at its agricultural value, and sells it at such valuation to the first
speculator who suspects, tests, and then discovers its hidden wealth.
The publication of the reports of the First Geological Board did much
to arrest the useless expenditures of money in the search for coal outside
of the coal field, and in other mining enterprises equally fallacious, by
which, through ignorance of the teachings of geology, parties are constantly led to squander their means. From the tendency which all mining schemes have to excite the imagination, it is scarcely less important
to our people to know acurately what we have not, than what we have,
among our mineral resources.
During the last twenty years, efforts have been made by members of
the Legislature who appreciated the importance of a thorough investigation of our mineral wealth, to have the geological survey resumed. For
this end recommendations were made in several of the messages of our
Governors, and bills were introduced by Dr. Jewett, of Summit, and
subsequently by General Garfield; but though the value of such investigations to the credit and industry of the State was generally confessed,
and there was no considerable opposition to either bill originating in
doubt of the intrinsic merit of the measure, yet, at one time because the
State Treasurer had appropriated to his own uses half a million of the
people's money, and subsequently because the treasury was long kept
empty by the expenditures upon the State House, it was thought by the
majority wiser to defer making appropriations for this, as well as various
other confessedly desirable objects, till the finances of the State should
be in a better condition. In all these years, however, the State was
suffering a positive annual loss, felt in both its industry and credit, for
the want of the knowledge a properly conducted geological survey could
not fail to impart. Every financial agent of the State, located in or yisiting the moneyed centres of our country or the world; agents going
abroad to effect loans with which to construct our lines of railroad, all