The Uses of Astronomy | Page 3

for the exhibition of its natural resources, its mineral and rock, its plants and animals, living and fossil. And this seems to me the most appropriate spot in the country for placing the first geological hall erected by the Government; for the County of Albany was the district where the first geological survey was undertaken, on this side of the Atlantic, and, perhaps, the world. This was in 1820, and ordered by that eminent philanthropist, Stephen Van Rensselaer, who, three years later, appointed Prof. Eaton to survey, in like manner, the whole region traversed by the Erie Canal. This was the commencement of a work, which, during the last thirty years, has had a wonderful expansion, 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 suggestion here. So large a portion of our country has now been examined, more or less thoroughly, by the several State governments, that it does seem to me the time has come when the National government should order a survey--geological, zoological, and botanical--of the whole country, on such a liberal and thorough plan as the surveys in Great Britain are now conducted; in the latter country it being understood that at least thirty years will be occupied in the work. Could not the distinguished New York statesman who was to have addressed us to-day be induced, when the present great struggle in which he is engaged shall have been brought to a close, by a merciful Providence, to introduce this subject, and urge it upon Congress? And would it not be appropriate for the American Association for the Advancement of Science to throw a petition before the government for such an object? Or might it not, with the consent of the eminent gentleman who has charge of the Coast Survey, be connected therewith, as it is with the Ordnance Survey in Great Britain.
The history of the American Association was then given:--
Prof. Mather, I believe, through Prof. Emmons, first suggested to the New-York Board of Geologists in November, 1838, in a letter proposing a number of points for their consideration. I quote from him the following paragraph relating to the meeting. As to the credit he has here given me of having personally suggested the subject, I can say only that I had been in the habit for several years of making this meeting of scientific men a sort of hobby in my correspondence with such. Whether others did the same, I did not then, and do not now know. Were this the proper place, I could go more into detail on this