Editorial 



During the spring of 1900 the Director of the United States 

 Geological Survey has planned, with the approval of the Secre- 

 tary of the Interior, an important reorganization of the Geologic 

 Branch. In order that the significance of this step should be 

 appreciated in all its bearings, it is desirable briefly to review 

 the history of the administrative and scientific control within 

 the survey. In the First Annual Report Mr. King set forth a plan 

 of organization based on grand geographic and geologic prov- 

 inces. The work being then restricted to the national domain 

 west of the 101st meridian, four divisions were established, that 

 of the Rocky Mountains under Emmons, that of the Colorado 

 under Dutton, that of the Great Basin under Gilbert, and of the 

 Pacific under Hague. Each of these divisions corresponded to 

 a province within which the geological phenomena had a certain 

 unity of history and character, and it was wisely argued that the 

 work in each should be directed by a geologist familiar with 

 the special problems of the area entrusted to him. At the same 

 time the limited appropriations of the survey and the adopted 

 policy of surveying the most important mining districts led to a 

 concentration of effort upon Leadville, Eureka, and the Comstock 

 Lode, so that initially comparatively little progress was made in 

 solving the broad geologic problems presented to each division. 

 The principal contributions which the West yielded to the phi- 

 losophy of the science were made by the surveys through whose 

 consolidation the Geological Survey was created. With the 

 growth of the survey and the addition to its corps of many of 

 the leading minds in American geology, more numerous geo- 

 graphic divisions were established and their limits became more 

 artificial. Thus in the Sixth Annual Report we find enumerated, 

 in addition to the ones first established, the Division of Gla- 

 cial Geology (Chamberlin), the Division of Volcanic Geology 



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