242 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XII. No. 294. 



made by the director for the continuation 

 of topographic mapping within and adja- 

 cent to the reserves, including triangula- 

 tion and spirit leveling and the marking of 

 certain reserve boundaries, and under this 

 allotment operations will be conducted in 

 the following reserves : Bighorn, Black 

 Hills, Lewis and Clarke, Flathead, Uinta, 

 Gila Eiver, Prescott, Sierra, Pine Moun- 

 tain and Zaca Lake, San Jacinto, San Ber- 

 nardino, Washington, and Mount Eainier. 



The general topographic operations con- 

 templated for the present year include the 

 mapping of about 40,000 square miles. This 

 area is distributed through about eightj'- 

 five quadrangles on two scales, and twenty- 

 seven States. 



The topographic mapping is progressing 

 steadily if slowly, as is indicated by the 

 fact that for the past five years the per- 

 centage of surveyed area has been in- 

 creased each year approximately one per 

 cent, the total percentage at the end of the 

 fiscal year 1900 being twenty-eight. If this 

 rate is not increased it will require over 

 seventy years to complete the survey of the 

 United States, to say nothing of the colo- 

 nial acquisitions, but it is hoped that this 

 period may be reduced. That the present 

 rate of appropriation is inadequate is evi- 

 dent from the fact that in making up the 

 plans for the current fiscal year it was nec- 

 essary to deny applications for work cover- 

 ing about as much territory as that for 

 which surveys were provided. These ap- 

 plications came, not only from the officers 

 of the surveys engaged in geologic, hydro- 

 graphic, and forestry investigations, but 

 from the business interests of the country 

 generally. 



Geologic Work. — During the spring of 1900 

 the Director has planned, with the ap- 

 proval of the Secretary 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 provinces. 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 Gil- 

 bert, 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, Eu- 

 reka, and the Comstock Lode, so that ini- 

 tially comparatively little progress was 

 made in solving the broad geologic prob- 

 lems presented to each division. The 

 principal contributions which the West 

 yielded to the philosophy of the science 

 were made by the surveys through whose 

 consolidation the Geological Survey was 

 created. With the growth of the Sur- 

 vey and the addition to its corps of 

 many of the leading minds in American 

 geology, more numerous geographic divi- 

 sions were established and their limits be- 

 came more artificial. Thus in the Sixth 

 Annual Report we find enumerated, in ad- 

 dition to the ones first established, the 

 Division of Glacial Geology (Chamberlin), 

 the Division of Volcanic Geology (Dutton), 

 the Division of the Crystalline Schists of 

 the Appalachian and Lake Superior Regions 

 (Pumpelly and Irving respectively), the 

 Appalachian Region (Gilbert), and the 

 Yellowstone Park (Hague). As divisions 



