EDITORIALS. 43 1 



Major Powell's administration has been a very notable one, 

 and will doubtless stand forth even more distinctively as we 

 recede from it in time and see it in perspective when its greater 

 outlines will be better defined and its details will fall into their 

 places as parts of the whole. From a comparatively small corps 

 of workers, with an inadequate appropriation, trammeled by leg- 

 islative restrictions and uncertainties, and embarrassed by unto- 

 ward inheritances from three inharmonious territorial surveys, 

 the organization has grown to be perhaps the largest and most 

 productive of official geological surveys. Its very strength has 

 indeed been an occasion of criticism on the part of some who 

 have conceived themselves to be unfavorably affected by its 

 great influence. 



One of the most notable characteristics of the administration 

 has been the large consideration given to the differentiation of 

 investigative work. To a degree perhaps never before equaled 

 in governmental work facilities have been afforded for the care- 

 ful and broad investigation of special subjects of a fundamental 

 nature. A portion of the results of these studies have appeared 

 in the special papers of the annual reports, in the monographs, 

 and in the correlation papers, but a considerable portion are yet 

 to be issued. 



Externally, perhaps the most conspicuous feature of Major 

 Powell's administration has been the great prominence given to 

 topographic work. If this work be conceived as subserving no 

 other function than that to which topographic maps were usually 

 put previous to the current decade, it might well be doubted 

 whether so large a proportion of the resources at the command 

 of the Survey were wisely given to this part of the work, and 

 the question of ratio and proportion may be a pertinent one in 

 any case, but it is necessary to a proper interpretation of the 

 policy of the Survey to note that an important evolution of geo- 

 logical science has been in progress, and that topographic and 

 physiographic factors now play a part in good geological work 

 that they have never played before. Physiographic geology has 

 had a new birth, and has taken an important place among the 



