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 survej's 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 



" In 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." '"" 



"'/.Of. cil., p. 328. 



""House Report no. 612, 43d Congress, ist Session, 1874, pp. 16-18. 



