to submit the
following circumstantial report:

Before proceeding to detail the actual state of affairs at
Dudzeele, near the line of canal connecting Bruges with the North
Sea, it may not be out of place to furnish a succinct history of
the origin of the explorations out of which the present alarming
events have arisen. It will be remembered by the State Department
that during the short interregnum of the provisional government
of France, under Lamartine and Cavaignac, in 1848, a proposition
was submitted by France to the governments of the United States,
Great Britain and Russia, and which was subsequently extended to
King Leopold of Belgium, to create an "International Board for
Subterranean Exploration" in furtherance of science, and in
order, primarily, to test the truth of the theory of igneous
central fusion, first propounded by Leibnitz, and afterward
embraced by most of contemporary geologists; but also with the
further objects of ascertaining the magnetic condition of the
earth's crust, the variations of the needle at great depths, and
finally to set at rest the doubts of some of the English
mineralogists concerning the permanency of the coal measures,
about which considerable alarm had been felt in all the
manufacturing centers of Europe.

The protocol of a quintuple treaty was finally drawn by Prof.
Henry, of the Smithsonian Institute, and approved by Sir Roderick
Murchison, at that time President of the Royal Society of Great
Britain. To this project Arago lent the weight of his great name,
and Nesselrode affixed the approval of Russia, it being one of
the last official acts performed by that veteran statesman.

The programme called for annual appropriations by each of the
above-named powers of 100,000 francs (about $20,000 each), the
appointment of commissioners and a general superintendent, the
selection of a site for prosecuting the undertaking, and a board
of scientific visitors, consisting of one member from each
country.

It is unnecessary to detail the proceedings for the first few
months after the organization of the commission. Prof. Watson, of
Chicago, the author of a scientific treatise called "Prairie
Geology," was selected by President Fillmore, as the first
representative of the United States; Russia sent Olgokoff;
France, Ango Jeuno; England, Sir Edward Sabine, the prese