Recent Publications of the American Geological Survey

Abstract

TO initiate and to be left behind—that seems to be the fate of England in the latter half of the nineteenth century. In science, at any rate, it is too often so. A sight of the volumes—fourteen in number, the earliest dated in 1891—with which our table is loaded, a glance at those which are already ranged upon our shelves, indicate that this is emphatically true of the work of the Geological Survey. We mean no reproach to British men of science or to the British surveyors. The State despises the one and starves the other; and the “people love to have it so”; for what care they for learning or research, unless it will obviously put money into the pocket? But this is a large question, and our space will not suffice even for an adequate notice of the volumes before us. These consist of one bound octavo volume on the mineral resources of the United States (the eighth of a series), nine paper-covered numbers of the Bulletin, slightly larger in size, ranging from thirty to five hundred and fifty pages; two volumes, still larger, of the Annual Report (eleventh), and yet two volumes of Monographs of quarto size.