August 6, 1885] 
NATURE 
319 
“The Commission shall be attached to the office of the 
secretary of the department of ——, and under his super- 
intendence shall exercise a general control over the plans 
of work of the Coast and Geodetic Survey, the Geological 
Survey, and the Meteorological Service, and shall have 
the charge and custody of all the archives, books, docu- 
ments, drawings, models, returns, apparatus, instruments, 
and all other things appertaining to the Commission. 
“The estimates of the heads of these bureaus or offices 
shall pass through the Commission for revision and 
approval; and, after the annual appropriations have 
been made, no money shall be expended under them, 
except after revision and approval by the Commission of 
projects submitted by these bureaus in compliance with 
such projects. 
“Tf at any time public money is being spent by any of 
these bureaus not in accordance with the views of the 
Commission, the Commission shall notify the proper 
auditor of the fact.” 
Our readers are already aware that the Congressional 
Committee appointed to consider the organisation of the 
surveys and other scientific work of the Government 
made no report at the last Session of Congress. The 
Commission was, however, continued as a Commission of 
the succeeding Congress. The expired places of Messrs. 
Pendleton and Lyman were filled by new appointments 
from the members elected to the next Congress. A meet- 
ing of the reorganised body has been held, which ad- 
journed until next November without coming to any 
definite conclusion respecting the measures to be finally 
proposed. Before adjourning, Major Powell was author- 
ised to make public the testimony which he had laid 
before them on different occasions, and which covers 
most of the points to be acted on by the Commission. 
Major Powell’s statements naturally include a very 
detailed account of the methods, work, organisation, and 
expenses of the Survey over which he presides. He also 
submitted his views upon the best method of consolidating 
the geological and coast surveys with the other scientific 
bureaus of the Government. This is the really important 
question before the Commission, since upon its decision 
must turn the general efficiency of the Government scien- 
tific service for a long time to come. The necessity for 
some such consolidation is strongly felt in Congress as 
well as outside of it. The one danger to be avoided is 
that of some hasty plan being adopted which may suit 
the exigencies of the moment, but may not work well 
after those exigencies have passed. 
One very strong reason for placing the scientific bureaus 
under one head, or in one department, is that scientific 
work has many features peculiar to itself, which require 
it to be conducted upon principles different in some 
respects from those which prevail in other departments. 
The head of an ordinary bureau or department of the 
government, and indeed every man in public life, is con- 
versant only with offices and duties which there is no 
serious difficulty in satisfactorily filling, with the aid of 
that knowledge of men and of the world which he ac- 
quires through his daily intercourse with others. Such a 
person is accustomed to finding scores of candidates for 
every office, from whom a suitable selectionis always poss- 
ible. The idea of an office for which there may be no 
applicants, or, if there are any, for which it is morally 
certain that the applicants are all unfitted, no matter how 
good their recommendations, is one which he finds it 
difficult to assimilate. Indeed, in the case of the purely 
scientific office, the ability to find the proper men must 
be a part of the life education of the man who is to make 
the selection. It is safe to say that the best officers who 
have served in the coast and geological surveys are men 
who, under the ordinary system of Government .appoint- 
ments, would never have been heard of in connection 
with the positions which they so ably fill. 
The same thing is true of the administration of a 
scientific bureau. No uniform system can be devised which 
will apply to all the details of a great scientific work. 
When we go beyond the regular routine operations it is 
needful that the duties shall be accommodated to the man, 
and that in many cases a larger measure of liberty shall 
be allowed the latter than could be tolerated in the usual 
operations of a Government department. All this re- 
quires, on the part of the administrative head of the 
department, an appreciation of the subject which can only 
be acquired by long familiarity. If the head is not specially 
charged with mastering the peculiar methods of admini- 
stration thus rendered necessary, the chances are that he 
will fall into one of two opposite errors: either he will 
leave the heads of the scientific bureaus to manage things 
in their own way, without any administrative control 
whatever, or he will exert his authority in such a way as 
to endanger the efficiency of the work. The former is 
undoubtedly the more natural course to take, and thus 
arise the friction and duplication of work which so 
seriously impair efficiency and discipline. 
Yet another feature of Government scientific work is 
that it is far removed from that public criticism which is 
so conducive to efficiency in other branches of the service. 
It is difficult to conceive that such a state of things as 
was exhibited by the surveys of the territories ten years 
ago could have existed in the performance of any work 
with which the public were conversant. At that time we 
had at least two independent surveys of the territories, 
prosecuted by different departments of the Government 
and with nominally different objects, but which were 
practically identical in their actual work. The officers in 
charge were independently surveying and mapping the 
very same regions. At the time that Hayden’s Atlas of 
Colorado was published, Capt. Wheeler was engaged in 
surveying Colorado and making maps of the territory 
substantially identical in their objects with those of 
Hayden. Both surveys were intended to cover the whole 
public domain. 
Nothing quite so bad as this is likely to arise in the 
future. But there is still room for much duplication of 
work as well as taste through competition in getting pos- 
session of particular fields. As a general rule, the head 
of a department is quite ready to approve of any ex- 
tension of work which any of his bureau officers may pro- 
pose, and has not always time to learn that the same 
work is being done, or might be better done, by some 
other department. The annual provision which Congress 
has got into the habit of inserting into the appropriations 
for the Signal Office—“ provided that hereafter the work 
of no other department, bureau, or commission authorised 
by law shall be duplicated by this bureau ”—is not quite 
satisfactory: it leaves open the question whether any 
proposed work is “the work of any other department, 
bureau, or commission.” 
The report of the National Academy of Sciences pro- 
poses to remedy some of these evils by placing the 
general policy of the scientific bureaus under the control 
of a mixed commission, organised somewhat after the 
plan of the Lighthouse Board. If the bureaus are to re- 
main separate, we see no better plan than this for securing 
the proper coordination of their work ; but Major Powell 
points out certain difficulties in the way of its successful 
operation. His strongest objection is, that subordinate 
officers of various departments would have to practically 
control the work, thus reducing the heads of the depart- 
ments to channels for transmitting instructions. If the 
proposed Commission were to assume any administrative 
control of the work, this objection would certainly be fatal. 
The official responsibility of the head of a department 
for the work of his bureaus should not be interfered with. 
But the report of the Academy expressly disclaims 
charging the Commission with any administrative respon- 
sibility. Its sole function was to prescribe the policy of 
the bureaus: that is, to decide what each one should do, 
