12 THE U. S. GEOLOGICAL SURVEY 



strictions confining the work of the Survey to the public land 

 region disappeared from the appropriation acts. In that year 

 appropriation was made "for geologic surveys in various por- 

 tions of the United States," a clause since repeated annually. 

 Under this clause, which is much broader than the former 

 clause authorizing the preparation of a geologic map, the Sur- 

 vey has extended every type of geologic investigation to the 

 country at large. 



As recently as 1914 the question was raised in Congress 

 whether the work of the Survey should not be limited, either 

 absolutely or conditionally, to the public lands, but no pro- 

 posals embodying this view have ever received favorable con- 

 sideration in either House. 



In 1884 an agreement for cooperation was made between 

 the Geological Survey and the Commonwealth of Massachu- 

 setts, which was about to undertake a topographic survey of 

 the state, the expense of field work to be divided equally be- 

 tween the national survey and the state, the national survey to 

 engrave the maps and give transfers of the plates to the state. 

 This agreement, which worked out very satisfactorily, was but 

 the first of a long series of agreements with the surveys of a 

 number of the states for cooperation in topographic and sub- 

 sequently in hydrographic and geologic work, and this form 

 of state cooperation has been of the greatest value in permit- 

 ting the extension of the Survey's standard methods and op- 

 erations over the country at large much more rapidly than 

 might otherwise have been possible. Cooperative agreements 

 in geologic and paleontologic work were in effect with twenty- 

 five states on June 30, 1917. 7 



As early as 1889 the Survey had informally extended its 

 operations to the territory of Alaska, having sent its repre- 



7 No attempt is made here to describe this system of cooperation 

 in full, as the Survey has described it in detail in a pamphlet entitled 

 "Cooperation between the United States and the Various States in 

 Topographic, Hydrographic and Geologic Work, 1910." The extent 

 to which states have cooperated up to June 30, 1917, is, however 

 shown in the report of the Director of the Survey for the fiscal year 

 1917, and is summarized in Appendix 5. 



