THE UNITED STATES GEOLOGICAL SURVEY. 479 



THE UNITED STATES GEOLOGICAL SURVEY.* 



By CIIAELES D. WALCOTT, 

 director of the survey. 



aEOLOGY in America has advanced by steady evolution from 

 a small beginning eighty years ago to its present propor- 

 tions, where it stands as one of the great sciences of the present 

 and of the future. The geologists of Europe founded the science 

 of geology in the earlier years of this century, and as the tide of 

 emigration passed across to this continent it brought with it a 

 knowledge of science and a spirit of scientific investigation. In 

 geology this first took systematic form in the State of New York. 

 State after State then took up the work, and finally the Federal 

 Government, in its western Territories. Among the men who 

 have led in the States were William Maclure, Amos Eaton, James 

 Hall, Ebenezer Emmons, Timothy Conrad, and their associates 

 on the New York Survey ; the brothers Rogers, and Richard Dale 

 Owen. Jules Marcou, J. S. Newberry, and others began work in 

 the west under the Federal Government, and following them the 

 organizers of the first Government surveys Clarence King, F. V. 

 Hayden, J. W. Powell, and George M. Wheeler. 



The organization of the present Geological Survey went into 

 effect July 1, 1879, the independent surveys that had previously 

 existed having been discontinued. It is a bureau of the Depart- 

 ment of the Interior, and is under the immediate control of a 

 director, who is appointed by the President and confirmed by the 

 Senate. The members of the regular and permanent corps of 

 the survey are nominated by the director and appointed by the 

 Secretary of the Interior, the director making only such tempo- 

 rary appointments as are authorized by the secretary. A plan 

 of operations and an estimate of the expenses of the survey are 

 submitted annually to the secretary, to whom the director also 

 makes report of the operations of the survey at the close of each 

 fiscal year. 



The survey occupies a'rented building which has 40,480 square 

 feet of floor space. In addition, the engraving and printing divi- 

 sion occupies an annex building, with 8,253 square feet of floor 

 space, and in the National Museum there are four laboratories for 

 the preparation and study of paleontologic and paleobotanic ma- 

 terial. Within the main building there is a chemical laboratory, 

 in which analyses of rocks, oils, minerals, etc., are made for the 

 geologists of the survey, as well as certain special investigations 



* Presidential Address before the Geological Society of Washington, delivered Decem- 

 ber 18, 1894. 



