ous portions of the State should be mapped, were acceded to as freely as were those of the Federal Bureau that it be given free hand in the selection of competent assistants, in the adoption of the methods of survey and in the conduct of the technical details of the work.

RECOMMENDATIONS.

We heartily commend the work so far accomplished and urgently recommend its continuance to speedy conclusion. To this end we respectfully direct your attention to the fact that the original estimates for this work contemplate the expenditure on topographic surveys alone of $25,000 by each side, a sum which would permit the completion of the mapping within ten years. For the next two years the appropriation is sufficient to permit of devoting only $15,000 each to such work, at this rate putting off the date of final completion to about fifteen years hence. Therefore, we respectfully recommend that hereafter appropriations be increased to at least $35,000 per annum. Such a sum would permit of devoting $25,000 each year to topographic surveys, $8,000 to geological surveys, and $2,000 to the preparation and publishing of local reports.

The question of the best methods of placing the results before the people of the State is one worthy of the serious consideration of the Legislature, and your instructions to this end are invited. In any event, the Federal Government will engrave and publish the topographic and geological maps and sell the former at the nominal cost of five cents per sheet. The latter are published with accompanying text discussing the nature of the geological formations and of the economic mineral resources of the area mapped, and are sold for twenty-five cents per map folio. Several states which have cooperated with the United States Geological Survey, as New York and Rhode Island, have been content with such method of publication and their citizens purchase these maps from Washington. Others, as Massachusetts and Connecticut, have published their own editions of the maps, but from the unrevised copper plates of the Government, and have sold these at an increased charge of twentyfive cents for the five cent maps. The State of Maryland combines the various maps in such manner as to permit of their issuance by counties, with accompanying geologic text in style similar to iolios published by the United States Geological Survey.

It has been suggested that this State assemble the results in the form of octavo volumes with maps and geologic text, one to each

county, with the addition by way of giving local color of data con cerning the various characteristics, resources, inhabitants, etc., of each township within the county. Your Commissioners scarcely think the results and necessary delay worthy the outlay. To do this the State would have to rearrange the method of survey at a loss of economic administration, in such manner as would permit of the completion of separate counties at a time. This would involve greatly increased cost because of the irregularity of county outlines, or a corresponding delay in securing completed results. It would involve the employment of a corps of semi-scientific assistants to examine the field and write up the results in popular form.

We believe it will be more dignified and will better accord with modern practice to place the unvarnished results before the public as they are prepared by the Federal experts, trusting to their intrinsic value to prove the wisdom of the expenditure, rather than to endeavor to foster an artificial popularity by returning to the methods of twenty-five years ago. To this end, it will be only necessary to employ under the Commission the services of a skilled and wellpaid geologist, who, with little aid other than that of a stenographer and draftsman, will edit the results published by the Federal survey. These may be assembled as are the Maryland maps, in county sheets, with text which shall be localized only by the addition of more detailed descriptions of the economic mineral, water and forest resources of the counties described.

Immediately upon enactment of legislation providing for this survey and prior to approval of the Governor or the appointment of the Commissioners, the Director of the Federal Survey, realizing the lateness of the season and the necessity of at once commencing work, in order that something might be accomplished before winter, prepared provisional plans in consultation with Mr. G. W. McNees and other members of the Legislature who were interested. As it was at once evident that there existed but a small amount of necessary primary control on which to base the topographic mapping, it was decided to devote an unusually large proportion of the funds to the extension of primary triangulation and precise leveling. It was also planned to place only three topographic parties in the field, one to map portions of Tioga and Potter counties, where there was much interest manifested by the development of a new oil field; one in Greene and Fayette counties, where a study of the coking coals offered a large opportunity for useful investigation, and a third in Erie and Crawford counties, with a view to procuring at the earliest date a topographic map of the lake and international border of the State.

Plans for primary triangulation in 1899 provided for placing several parties in the field to extend the same into the interior of

the State from the only three existing bases within its borders. One was to work from Tioga county southward towards Lycoming county, thus controlling the oil and timber lands of that portion of the State. The second was to work from a base near Hagerstown, Md., northward to control future mapping in the agricultural lands of Cumberland Valley, and in the region of the Huntingdon and Broad Top coal fields in Franklin, Fulton, Bedford and Blair counties. Five others were to extend triangulation from an existing base near Morgantown, W. V., northward through Greene, Fayette, Westmoreland, Allegheny and Butler counties into Beaver, Indiana and Clarion counties. This was with a view to preparing the way for topographic and geologic mapping in those important economic and industrial regions where are the vast deposits of coking coal, gas, oil and clay, for which the western end of the State is justly famed.

In order that the topographic mapping might be based on exact and final elevations and because such levels as existed in the State differed among themselves by several feet, it was at once decided to extend lines of precise leveling in such manner as to cover the entire State. These levels were to be reduced to mean sea level at Sandy Hook, N. Y., as a uniform datum, and were to be based on existing lines of levels of the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey transcontinental line at Grafton, W. Va., and Harrisburg, Pa.; of the United States Engineers', at Erie, Pa., and of the United States Geological Survey at Corning, N. Y. Only by means of such exact bases of horizontal and vertical control could widely separated foci of work be extended until they met across the length and breadth of the State, and agree in position and in elevation within reasonable limts.

It was at once evident to the Commission on its organization that the above plans had been broadly and wisely made with a view to preparing for the immediate extension of topographic mapping and geologic examinations into those portions of the State which contained the largest natural resources. While at the same time some immediate mapping might be done where basal control already existed. Your Commissioners, therefore, promptly approved the same and field work was at once commenced with the least delay.

Plans for 1900 were mutually agreed upon during the winter of 1899 and provided for the extension of topographic mapping over the more important economic areas previously controlled. This work was to be pushed to the limits of the funds available while primary triangulation, which was already well advanced, was to be undertaken only in such amount as would keep it ahead of the topographers. Accordingly, it was agreed to place only two triangulation

parties in the field for the season, one in Greene, Washington and Allegheny counties, and the other in Blair and Huntingdon counties. It was agreed to place six topographic parties on the work of mapping so much of the following counties as the length of the season would permit, namely, Tioga, Lehigh, Berks, Lebanon, Adams, York, Cumberland, Franklin, Bedford, Blair, Fayette, Washington, Westmoreland, Indiana and Armstrong.

Plans for geologic field work during the season of 1900 were necessarily restricted to the areas for which topographic mapping had been completed during the previous year. It was accordingly agreed to map the geology and investigate the mineral resources on the Masontown, Uniontown, Gaines and Elkland quadrangles, with a view to the preparation of exhaustive geologic folios which should show the location and depth and describe the characterics of the economic deposits of the areas mapped. How fully the above plans have been carried out is clearly shown in the following statement of results.

Organization.

The topographic work was under the personal direction and supervision of Mr. II. M. Wilson, chief of the Atlantic Section of Topography of the United States Geological Survey. Mr. Wilson arranged all plans in conference with the State Commissioners, prepared all estimates, assigned the various party chiefs and their assistants to their fields of labor, and otherwise directed the administrative details of field and office work. Through him monthly statements of expenditure and reports of results of field work were submitted to the Commissioners. In this he was ably assisted by his clerk, Miss Helen Fields.

We desire here to express our high appreciation of the uniform. courtesy extended by the Federal officers to the members of the Commission in all of their dealings. Full opportunity was invariably given in advance to ascertain our desires, receive our recommendations for the employment of temporary personnel, and the location. and order of priority in which the surveys of the various portions. of the State should be undertaken. The Commission has been kept fully informed by monthly reports and official statements of the condition of progress and the expenditure of funds, and communications concerning the progress of the work were promptly and satisfactorily answered.

In this connection it is pertinent to add that all expenses of this administration, salaries and traveling expenses, including the examination of vouchers by the Division of Accounts of the United States Geological Survey, were borne by the Federal Bureau alone.

For administrative purposes the field and office work of triangula

tion and other primary control were placed by Mr. Wilson under the general supervision of Mr. S. S. Gannett, topographer, chief of the computing division of the United States Geological Survey. For similar reasons Mr. Frank Sutton, topographer, was given general supervision of the office draughting of the topographic maps. To both much credit is due for the excellence and amount of the work accomplished.

The geologic field and office work of the co-operative survey was under the immediate direction of Mr. M. R. Campbell, geologist of the Federal Survey, who, for the past ten years has made a special study of the Appalachian coal field south of Pennsylvania. Mr. Campbell's plan, and the conclusion drawn from his field investigations received the benefit of the criticisms of Messrs. Bailey Willis, chief of the Division of Areal Geology, and C. Williard Hayes, chief of the Division of Non-metallic Minerals of the United States Geological Survey.

RESULTS.

Geologic Surveys. --Mr. Campbell, aided by Messrs. John D. Irving and Myron L. Fuller, assistant geologists of the Federal Survey, began geologic field work July 1, 1900, on the Uniontown and Masontown quadrangles. This territory lies principally in Fayette county, but it extends westward across the Monongahela river a short distance into Greene county. It includes some of the most valuable territory in the bituminous coal field.

The most important economic problems in this field consist of the accurate mapping of the outcrop of the great Pittsburg coal and in the determination of the geologic structure, or, in other words, the "lay" of the coal bed beneath the surface. The latter feature is particularly important in that part of the field which lies in Greene county, and in the western part of Fayette county. This territory has an area of about 100 square miles, and from recent developments it promises to become a coke-producing region second only to the great Connellsville basin of Fayette and Westmoreland counties. The geologic work was arranged so as to cover this new territory, and thus afford the coal operators the best information possible regarding the size and shape of the basin and the depth of the coal.

In the Connellsville basin, the southern end of which extends into these quadrangles, the demand for accurate information is not so imperative, and this demand has been in large measure answered by the extension of the mines and the development of new plants in various parts of the basin. Even in this old and well known region the exact shape of the basin has never been determined and operators are anxious to have their data assembled in this form.