270 NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES 
satisfaction, long expressed freely in private, has now taken shape in a demand 
brought recently before Congress and strongly urged, that all national scientific 
surveys be placed under the control of the Engineering Bureau of that Depart- 
ment and directed by army officers. It is in view of this demand that we have 
undertaken a general review of the merits of the case, if perchance we may con- 
tribute something toward its settlement. To the educated science of the country, 
the movement seems a most unreasonable one. ‘The feeling and opinion of 
scientific men are, we venture to say, well-nigh or altogether unanimous against it. 
A strong remonstrance has been sent to Washington from some of the leading 
educational institutions—Yale, Harvard, and others—signed by all their scientific 
professors; and more and stronger will be likely to follow, if there shall seem to 
be any danger that so invidious a selection of the graduates of one school, and that 
a military one, to take charge of the public scientific interests of the country, 
will be decreed by Congress.” °° 
The subject was discussed in the first session of the 43d Con- 
gress (1874) but led to no immediate results. The House Com- 
mittee on Public Lands in their report on the resolution of 
April 15, 1874, inquiring whether it was not practicable to con- 
solidate the surveys under one department, remarked as follows: 
“The committee believe that at present it would not be of public benefit to 
place the whole of the surveys under one Department. 
“The time is approaching, however, when it may be proper so to consolidate 
them, with a view to the making of a grand geographical, geological, and topo- 
graphical map of the Territories worthy of the nation because of its accuracy and 
minuteness of detail; and the committee believe that they would be conducted 
most to the public interest by being placed under the control and guidance of 
the Interior Department. ... . 
“Tn thus keeping separate, for the present, the surveys now making under the 
War and Interior Departments, a generous rivalry will be maintained among the 
good men therein, and a stimulus will be given to each to do the best work 
possible, and a resulting benefit will ensue in more accurate surveys and more 
extensive and valuable maps and reports. ... . 
“The conclusions, therefore, to which the committee have come are, that the 
surveys under the War Department, so far as the same are necessary for military 
purposes, should be continued ; that all other surveys for geographical, geological, 
topographic, and scientific purposes should be continued under the direction of 
the Department of the Interior, and that suitable appropriations should be made 
by Congress to accomplish these results.” 1°° 
” Loc. cit., p. 328. 
* House Report no. 612, 43d Congress, 1st Session, 1874, pp. 16-18. 
