The three decades preceding the Civil War, then, constitute the era of State surveys, well described by Merrill as at first characterized by a contagious enthusiasm for beginning geologic work, later by a more normal condition in which every available geologist seems to have been quietly at work, and finally by renewed activity in creating new organizations. The net result was that Louisiana and Oregon seem to have been the only States not having at least one geological survey. [Illustration: From “Contributions to the History of American Geology” by George P. Merrills. ] The first specific appropriation by the Federal Government for geologic investigation appears to have been made in 1834, when a supplemental appropriation for surveys of roads and canals under the War Department, authorized in 1824, contained the item “of which sum five thousand dollars shall be appropriated and applied to geological and mineralogical survey and researches.” In July, 1834, Mr. G. W. Featherstonhaugh was appointed United States geologist and employed under Colonel Abert, U. S. Topographical Engineers, to “personally inspect the mineral and geological character” of the public lands of the Ozark Mountain region. Overlooking the incidental fact that this Englishman—a man of scientific attainment and large interest in public affairs—was never naturalized,[98] it must be placed to the credit of this first of United States geologists that within seven months he completed his field work and returned to Washington, and on February 17, 1835, his report was transmitted to Congress. Two years earlier Featherstonhaugh had memorialized Congress for aid in the preparation of a geologic map of the whole territory of the United States, and in connection with this project he suggested that geology as an aid to military engineering should have a place in the curriculum at West Point. This first United States geologist also appears to have combined an appreciation of the practical worth of “the mineral riches of our country, their quality, quantity, and the facility of procuring them,” with an interest in the more scientific side of geology, though his hypotheses regarding both economic geology and stratigraphic and structural geology have not won the endorsement of all later workers in the same regions. In all these respects, however, Featherstonhaugh may stand as a fairly good prototype. His contributions to international affairs subsequent to his scientific service to the United States are of interest; he served as one of Her Majesty’s commissioners in the settlement of the Canadian-United States boundary question in 1839–40 and made an examination of the disputed area, and after the settlement of this controversy he was appointed British Consul for the Department of the Seine, France, where in 1848 he personally engineered the escape of Louis Philippe from Havre.