ion, reaching a large part of the
States of the Union, as well as Canada, Nova Scotia, and New
Brunswick, and, I might add, several European countries, where
the magnificent surveys now in progress did not commence till
after the survey of Albany and Rensselaer Counties. How glad are
we, therefore, to find on this spot the first Museum of
Economical Geology on this side of the Atlantic! Nay, embracing
as it does all the department of Natural History, I see in it
more than a European Museum of Economical Geology, splendid
though they are. I fancy, rather, that I see here the germ of a
Cis-Atlantic British Museum, or Garden of Plants.

North Carolina was the first State that ordered a geological
survey; and I have the pleasure of seeing before me the gentleman
who executed it, and in 1824-5 published a report of 140 pages. I
refer to Professor Olmstead, who, though he has since won
brighter laurels in another department of science, will always be
honored as the first commissioned State geologist in our land.

Of the New York State Survey he said:--

This survey has developed the older fossiliferous rocks, with a
fullness and distinctness unknown elsewhere. Hence European
savans study the New York Reports with eagerness. In 1850, as I
entered the Woodwardian Museum, in the University of Cambridge,
in England, I found Professor McCoy busy with a collection of
Silurian fossils before him, which he was studying with Hall's
first volume of Paleontology as his guide; and in the splendid
volumes, entitled _British Paleozoric Rocks and Fossils_, which
appeared last year as the result of those researches, I find
Professor Hall denominated the great American Paleontologist. I
tell you, Sir, that this survey has given New York a reputation
throughout the learned world, of which she may well be proud. Am
I told that it will, probably, cost half a million? Very well.
The larger the sum, the higher will be the reputation of New York
for liberality; and what other half million expended in our
country, has developed so many new facts or thrown so much light
upon the history of the globe, or won so world-wide and enviable
a reputation?

And of Geological Surveys in general:--

In regard to this matter of geological surveys, I can hardly
avoid making a sugg