644 NATURAL SCIENCE. Nov.. 



The Crisis in the United States Geological Survey. 



Foremost among the news of scientific movements this 

 month must be placed a serious announcement from America. 

 All European students of geology will learn with deep regret 

 that Congress has this year refused the United States Geological 

 Survey its usual appropriation, and that all field work has therefore been 

 suspended, while the members of the staff have been ordered so to 

 finish off their reports that they may either be published or kept in 

 manuscript. As the news first reached England, it seemed as if the 

 final winding up of the Survey were contemplated, but this, there is 

 reason to hope, is not the case. The problems of the geology of the 

 United States are of such wide interest, and they have been handled 

 by the official surveyors with such originality and breadth of view as 

 to have exercised great influence on contemporary geological thought ; 

 a complete suspension of the Survey would, therefore, be nothing less 

 than a scientific catastrophe. The study of American geology is 

 attended with such difficulties arising from the vastness of the 

 distances to be traversed, and the unsettled state of the country, that 

 any detailed work is beyond the power of single individuals, and only 

 a great national department could hope- to surmount the obstacles. 

 The Monographs and Bulletins issued by the Survey have, moreover, 

 generally been regarded as the finest series of geological works ever 

 published, and the generosity with which they have been distributed 

 to foreign geologists is frequently quoted as an example to European 

 Governments. On this side of the Atlantic it has, therefore, been 

 generally felt that, while many of the United States Departments, 

 such as the Bureau of Statistics, have much to learn before they 

 reach the European standard, the Geological Survey was an institu- 

 tion of which the citizens of the United States might be justly proud. 



Bitter attacks have been made on the Survey, such as that which 

 caused a painful sensation in Europe three years ago ; but the most 

 venomous shafts of this were obviously inserted by the editors of the 

 papers in which the controversy raged. After deducting the bluff 

 about "hurling azoic facts" and "picking up palaeontological 

 gauntlets," the general impression left was simply that two famous 

 palaeontologists could not agree as to whether the skull of a certain 

 fossil ought to have been mounted on the end of its neck or on the 

 end of its tail. The speech of Secretary Noble at the opening of 

 the International Geological Congress at Washington last year 

 encouraged the hope that this quarrel had not damaged the credit of 

 the Survey ; though we fear it must have had some effect, since the 

 section of Vertebrate Palaeontology is no longer to be officially 

 recognised. The Chief Secretary stated that the United States 

 Government fully reahsed the immense national value of the work of 

 the Survey, and that, large as was the annual appropriation for its 

 service, no grant was voted more readily. We may, therefore, fairly 



