60 THE U. S. GEOLOGICAL SURVEY 



lands. In addition, however, the Survey aids materially in 

 the actual administration of the public land laws, for it is 

 called upon to investigate the mineral and water resources of 

 specific areas of the public land, as well as to determine the 

 value of certain tracts, and to recommend to the Secretary of 

 the Interior or the General Land Office the designation or 

 non-designation of each tract in such areas as falling under 

 one or another of the statutes governing the public lands. 

 Moreover, on occasion, it is charged with the drafting, for 

 the approval of the Secretary of the Interior or the President, 

 of further regulations for the administration of these laws. 



Origin and Development. For a decade or more before 

 the creation of the Survey, Congress, by legislation for the 

 disposition of the public lands, had in increasing degree drawn 

 distinctions between the several types of land. The home- 

 stead law of 1862 had expressly excluded mineral lands from 

 its provisions. Every grant to a railroad, beginning in 1862 

 and ending in 1871, excluded from the grant all lands contain- 

 ing minerals other than coal and iron. In the decade 1865- 

 1875 were enacted the basic provisions governing the disposi- 

 tion of mineral lands. In 1873 was enacted the coal land law, 

 which provided not merely for the sale of coal lands under 

 special provisions, but, inferentially at least, for their evalua- 

 tion before sale. In 1877 still another novel distinction was 

 introduced into the land laws by the enactment of a provision 

 for the sale of desert lands. 



Despite the existence of these special provisions relative to 



the disposition of desert, timber, mineral and coal and iron 



lands, neither the statutes nor the machinery of the Land 



Office made any provision for the independent determination 



by the government, in advance of sale, of the character of the 



lands to be sold. The sole method employed was that of 



proof offered by the entryman or claimant and subject to 



challenge before the officers of the Land Office. 8 The results 



8 "At present the General Land Office possesses the machinery for 

 the survey, classification, and sale of the public lands. In that bureau 

 the field-notes and maps of the various deputy surveyors are intended 



