JOHN WESLEY POWELL DAVIS 



gible to users who are not trained geologists." This feature 

 of the plan has not been carried out, and cannot be carried out 

 unless a great part of the laborious and expensive accumula- 

 tion of scientific fact and inference is not published in direct 

 connection with the geological map to which it so closely ap- 

 plies. Certain critics have questioned whether another form 

 of publication than a large folio would not be more generally 

 useful, and some folios have lately been prepared in the form 

 of bulletins with folded maps for field use; but for purposes 

 of study in every other place than on the ground the folio 

 form introduced under Powell is the most convenient. If the 

 whole series of folios, when completed, proves to be a heavy 

 care for any library, this must be charged against the glorious 

 misfortune of our large national area. 



IRRIGATION SURVEY. 



The Tenth Annual Report tells of the Irrigation Survey, in- 

 stituted in 1888, as a department of the Geological Survey, 

 for the determination of the extent to which arid districts can 

 be redeemed by irrigation and for the selection of sites for 

 reservoirs, but not the construction of irrigation works. This 

 was a fitting though a delayed consequence of the report on 

 the arid lands ten years earlier; but it added a heavy weight 

 to the duties of the Director, and probably led to the appoint- 

 ment of Gilbert in 1889, and later of Walcott, as chief geolo- 

 gist. The establishment of the Irrigation Survey must be re- 

 garded as having been prompted by Powell himself, for he had 

 continually urged upon Congress the necessity of making ap- 

 propriations for such investigations, and had delivered ad- 

 dresses and written magazine articles on the same subject. 

 Although the irrigation work was cut off in 1892, much prog- 

 ress in this direction was accomplished, as attested first by the 

 growth for several years in the size of the special annual re- 

 ports on irrigation problems and fourteen years later by the 

 establishment of the Reclamation Service; and all this must be 

 credited to Powell's initiative and to the enthusiasm that he 

 aroused in the younger men whom he selected to carry on the , 

 work. 



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