Page:The Journal of geology (IA journalofgeology21894univers).pdf/116

premature, is not so injurious as when a survey like that of Missouri, which has just reached maturity, and is in its most active and useful stage, is suddenly discontinued. Great quantities of unpublished information relating to many different subjects and in various degrees of preparation are absolutely lost to the state, for much of such information is necessarily too incomplete to be published without further field work. It has been collected, however, at very considerable expense, and much of it, with a little more time, would be ready to be published and would become of lasting benefit to the state.

By the premature abolishment of a survey, therefore, the state loses not only the money actually invested in these unfinished reports, but it loses the reports themselves, which are on subjects in which almost every citizen in the state is either directly or indirectly interested. More than this, in dispensing with a state geologist and his staff, who for years have been actively and intelligently fulfilling the functions of their offices, the state also loses the benefit of the vast amount of general experience in the region that they have acquired during their investigations. If the survey is ever reorganized, the new officials must not only acquire the same experience over again, at the expense of the state, but they must also collect again the facts lost on the discontinuance of the preceding survey.

The history of many states shows that several times they have organized surveys and then abolished them before the work was completed, or even fairly started; and that perhaps years later they have organized new surveys. In some cases this procedure has been repeated so many times that the advantages gained have cost the state immensely more than they would have done if the first survey had been continued to completion. Missouri itself has had several such experiences, and the friends of the state had hoped, when the present survey was inaugurated, that it would be continued until all its great geological and mining resources had been fully investigated.

In a number of cases, in times of financial depression, state legislatures have been obliged to curtail their expenditures; and