Any description of geologic work under the Federal Government that included no reference to the State surveys would be inadequate, for in both date of execution and stage of development the work of the State geologists must be given precedence. In Merrill’s Contributions to the History of American Geology,[97] whose modest title fails even to suggest that this work not only furnishes the most useful chronologic record of the progress of the science on the American continent but is in fact a very thesaurus of incidents touching the personal side of geology, the author by his division of his subject shows that four decades of the era of State surveys elapsed before the era of national surveys began. Thus the geologic surveys of some of the Eastern States antedate by several decades any Federal organization of comparable geologic scope, and in investigations directed to local utilitarian problems these pioneer geologists working in the older settled States of the East were in fact already conducting work as detailed in type as much of that attempted by the Federal geologists of the later period. Even to-day it is true in a general way that the State geologist can and should attack many of his local problems with intensive methods and with detail of results that are neither practicable nor desirable for the larger interstate investigations or for examinations in newer territory. All this relation of State and Federal work must be looked upon as normal evolutionary development of geologic science in America. One who reads the names of the Federal geologists of the early days, beginning with Jackson and Owen and following with such leaders in Federal work as Gilbert, Chamberlin, King, R. D. Irving, Pumpelly, Van Hise, and Walcott, may note that these were all connected in their earlier work with State surveys. Nor has the relation been one-sided, for among the State geologists Whitney, Blake, Mather, Newberry, J. G. Norwood, Purdue, Bain, Gregory, Ashley, Kirk, W. H. Emmons, DeWolf, Mathews, Brown, Landes, Moore, and Crider received their field training in part or wholly as members of a Federal Survey. Moreover, under the present plan of effective cooperation of several of the State surveys with the United States Geological Survey, it is often difficult to differentiate between the two in either personnel or results, for it even happens that the publishing organization may not have been the major contributor. The full record of American geology, past and present, can not be set forth in terms of Federal auspices alone.