276 NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES 
first asserted that the committee was not properly constituted. 
He then pointed out that the committee had prescribed no 
methods of work and had made no estimate of expense, and 
claimed that it had exceeded its functions in taking the work of 
the Coast Survey into consideration. He argued that the geo- 
detic work of that organization was not necessary to the proper 
surveying of the coasts of the United States and that it was not 
as well equipped as the War Department to do the work of 
mensuration for all the surveys, as proposed in the Academy’s 
plan, and that, in any case, the War Department could perform 
the necessary work at a much smaller expense. After reviewing 
the history of the survey of the Great Lakes, he made the claim 
that the kind of land survey of the United States at large recom- 
mended by the Academy was unnecessarily refined and would 
entail enormous expenses, and, by a very full comparison of 
costs, endeavored to show that if really demanded by Congress, 
it would be carried out at a much less expense by the War De- 
partment than by the Coast Survey. 
General Humphreys appended to his letter a communication 
from General Comstock, the officer in charge of the survey of 
the Northern and Northwestern lakes and the St. Lawrence 
and Mississippi rivers, dated October 25, 1875, and entitled 
“Considerations of the objects and methods of a natural topo- 
graphical survey,” in which the methods, cost and uses of differ- 
ent kinds of surveys are concisely summarized. General Com- 
stock criticised Professor Whitney for omitting the question of 
cost from his review of the surveys, already mentioned, and 
remarks that on this account “ his conclusions as to the value of 
the results derived from the funds supplied are worthless or 
misleading.” 
On the publication of General Humphreys’ letter, the Super- 
intendent of the Coast Survey, C. P. Patterson, addressed a com- 
munication on January 18, 1879, to the Secretary of the Treasury 
suggesting that there had been a misapprehension on the part of 
the former relative to the cost of the Coast Survey work. This 
was transmitted to General Humphreys, who thereupon pre- 
