Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 22.djvu/844

824 Up to the present time the entire publication of the Natural History of the State, exclusive of the Annual Reports of the Survey and thirty-five Annual Reports of the State Museum, may be enumerated as below:

Of these twenty-four volumes, three thousand copies each have been published, making the entire number of seventy-two thousand quarto volumes, which have been published and distributed as the result of the Geological Survey of the State.

At the close of the field-work of the survey, the question of the disposition of the collections which had been made became a subject of much interest. It had been originally suggested that these might occupy a room in the State Library, or be arranged in some of the unused committee-rooms in the Capitol. The amount of material, however, was so great, and the importance of its proper arrangement so manifest, that the old State Hall, at that time about to be vacated, was appropriated for the purpose of a State Museum. At a later period (1857) the old building was demolished, and a more commodious one erected en the same site; and this is now filled to overflowing, and a large amount of collections remain unprovided for. In nearly all respects the survey has been carried out according to the original conception and plan. It has resulted in far larger and more interesting collections, and in far more interesting and valuable publications, than could ever have been anticipated by its original promoters. It has laid the foundations of geological science in our country, and made the State of New York the classic ground for the study of palæozoic geology.

The cost of the survey being computed in dollars, the value of the results is sometimes estimated by a similar standard; but the