In introducing Jefferson’s Notes on the State of Virginia,
William Peden declares this mass of information and commentary
to be “…the most important scientific...book written by an
American before 1785." In Notes, readers find inventories and
analyses of stream flow, lakes and coastlines, topography,
soils, climate, minerals, plants and animals. Jefferson’s
contributions, though not termed geological at the time, are
such in a modern sense. His “Rivers” section stands as a
prototype of publications produced a century later by the U.S.
Geological Survey. His discourse on minerals set the pattern for
the mineral commodity surveys now published each year by the
U.S. Geological Survey. In Notes Jefferson described field
methods he developed to place time lines on layers of soils—an
important contribution to stratigraphy, a nascent branch of
geology. With his one book, Jefferson demonstrated he was more
than a tabulator and analyzer of information. He also promoted
the scientific method and used the occasion to cr