266 



NATURE 



\Aug. 5, 1875 



there was no reason to doubt. As the Department had 

 been for more than half a century in undisputed com- 

 mand of the exploratory expeditions of those western 

 regions, perhaps some of its more zealous functionaries 

 may have grown somewhat jealous of the increasing 

 popularity of the work done by the Department of the 

 Interior, and may have looked upon that work as an 

 unwarrantable encroachment upon the recognised pro- 

 vince of the military corps. Be this as it may, a chance 

 meeting of two independent survey parties in 1873, and 

 the fact that to a certain extent they both surveyed the 

 same ground, led to a battle royal in the spring of last 

 year, wherein appeared the chiefs of the Departments 

 with President Grant at their head, military men, geolo- 

 gists, naturalists, topographers, and several cohorts of 

 professors. Evidently some of the parties knew that the 

 contest would come sooner or later, and were prepared 

 accordingly. The first bomb-shell was thrown as it were 

 by an outsider, on the 15th of April, 1874, when Mr, 

 Lazarus D. Shoemaker carried a resolution in Congress 

 requesting the President to inform the House what geo- 

 graphical and geological surveys were carried on by the 

 Government in the same or contiguous areas of territory 

 lying to the west of the Mississippi, and whether these 

 could not be combined under one Department, or at 

 least have their respective geographical limits defined. 



The question thus raised turn out to be really whether 

 the War Department should have entire control of the 

 surveys, both those intended for military and those for 

 purely civil purposes. The President replied that they 

 would be more economically and quite as efficiently 

 carried on by the military authorities. Not content with 

 this recommendation of its military chief, Congress 

 referred the matter to its Committee on Public Lands. 

 A careful investigation followed, and though the military 

 side fought hard for its supremacy, the Committee 

 decided against the purposed consolidation. Their con- 

 clusions ran thus : " 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, topographical, and scientific 

 purposes should be continued under the Department of 

 the Interior, and that suitable appropriations should be 

 made by Congress to accomplish these results." 



There can be little doubt that though it must have 

 chagrined some sanguine partisans whose ebullitions of 

 temper iorm an amusing feature in the congressional 

 blue-book, this decision of the Committee was in the cir- 

 cumstances a wise one, and one which, followed out by 

 the Government, will have an important influence in the 

 development of the vast and still unexplored regions over 

 which the surveys have yet to extend. It is impossible 

 that the corps of Engineers, weighted with all the 

 numerous and arduous duties which form its ordinary 

 work, should be able to furnish the necessary complement 

 of trained geologists, botanists, naturalists, and other 

 scientific men for the adequate exploration of the territories. 

 In fact, the scientific work of that corps has all along been 

 done in great measure by civilians. But it is neither 

 needful nor desirable that civilians of high training in 

 - practical scientific work should be placed under military 

 direction. They move more freely without it. And as 

 in the Western Territories they declare that they no 



longer need the protection of an escort, the sole remaining 

 reason for a military supervision would seem to be 

 removed. 



The Surveys of the Department] of the Interior 

 claim the first place from their voluminousness and 

 from the wide area to which they refer. As already 

 mentioned, they have been carried on since their be- 

 ginning by Dr. F. V. Hayden, to whose skill in geo- 

 logical work, and tact in diplomatic relations with 

 Government bureaux, officials, and fellow-labourers in 

 science, their success is certainly in large measure 

 due. For the last twenty-two years he has given himself 

 to the exploration of the north-western territories. In the 

 spring of 1853 he ascended the Missouri in one of the 

 American Fur Company's steamboats and spent three 

 years up there, during which time he accumulated con- 

 siderable collections in natural history. In 1856 he joined 

 an expedition of the Engineer Topographical Corps to 

 that region as surgeon and naturaUst. On the outbreak 

 of the Civil War he took service in the Federal Army, as 

 Surgeon of Volunteers, and served four years. But 

 when the war ended, finding himself out of employment, 

 he in 1866 returned to the north-west on his own resources, 

 and resumed his researches in the natural history of that 

 region. In the following year. Congress having made a 

 small grant of $5,000 towards a Geological Survey of 

 Nebraska, Dr. Hayden received the charge of it. This 

 was the beginning of his career as Government geologist. 

 But his path was not strewn with roses, either amid the 

 hills of Nebraska or in the Government Offices at Wash- 

 ington. The sum appropriated for his survey in 1867 

 was the unexpended balance of the grant for the legis- 

 lative expenses of the territory. He had a sore fight to 

 get it renewed next year. But in 1869 Congress took up 

 the question in a broader spirit, and sanctioned a general 

 geological survey of the Territories of the United States, 

 with an appropriation of |io,ooo to be administered by 

 the Department of the Interior. Since that date, owmg 

 no doubt to the marked success of the Survey, the gran 

 has grown rapidly in amount, till at present it stands at 

 875,000. 



This great increase in the amount of funds at his dis- 

 posal has enabled Dr. Hayden to augment and equip his 

 staff to an extent very different from that of his modest 

 beginning in 1867. According to his last published 

 report he organises his force into three geological parties, 

 each completely furnished and able to act independently, 

 so that if desired it could be transferred to any portion of 

 the public domain. Each of these parties consists of a 

 topographer, an assistant topographer, a geologist, two 

 packers, a cook, and usually two or three others as 

 general assistants or collectors in natural history. But 

 besides these he has still three other parties, one for 

 the purpose of carrying on the primary triangulation of 

 the country and thus correcting and harmonising the 

 trigonometrical work of the other or geological explorers, 

 a second for procuring photographs and information 

 likely to be useful to the other parties and the public, 

 and a third, and not least important, the quartermaster's 

 party, for furnishing supplies to all the others. These 

 three last-named parties traverse the entire field of work. 



A mere inspection of the catalogue of the publications 

 of the Geological Survey of the Territories is enough to 



