Page:The Journal of geology (IA journalofgeology21894univers).pdf/115

It has been announced that the Board of Directors of the Geological Survey of Missouri have decided to publish only three more reports, viz.: those on paleontology, on clays, and on lead and zinc; and "to abandon other work on reports on hand, whether nearly completed or not," as well as to discontinue the survey after June 1, 1894.

We hope that this report is entirely erroneous. If it is true, however, those who have followed the history of the Geological Survey of Missouri will hear the news with deep regret. The first appropriation for the present survey was made by the legislature in 1889, and in the fall of that year Mr. Arthur Winslow was appointed State Geologist. Since that time the work of the survey has been rapidly and intelligently developed, and a number of valuable reports have been issued. Though these reports contain a great amount of information, there is vastly more yet which should, and would, if unhindered, appear in later volumes. In the work of a state geological survey the different subjects discussed are not worked up entirely independently of each other, but in the collection of data in the field on one subject, the geologist collects incidentally many facts relating to other subjects which he expects to treat of at a subsequent time. As a result of this, the amount of information on all points of scientific or economic importance is steadily increasing in the office of the state geological survey; and every report that is published means not only that the subject to which it relates has been thoroughly investigated, but also that many facts relating to other matters of general interest have been collected, and will, at some future time, be supplemented by additional facts and form the basis of other reports.

When a survey has completed its work on most subjects and has but little left to publish, its discontinuance, though it may be