HISTORY AKD LEGAL BASIS. 35 



If the Geological Survey reports that it has not sufficient informa- 

 tion to make a definite classification it furnishes to the Land Office 

 whatever data it may have, which are placed in the hands of a mem- 

 ber of the field service for field investigation and report. The report 

 rendered is forwarded to the Geological Survey for further consid- 

 eration, and a classification based upon it and other facts at hand 

 is reported to the General Land Office. Under this agreement the 

 records of the Survey are enriched by the data gathered by the 

 Land Office field service and, on the other hand, the great amount 

 of valuable information regarding the public lands on file in the 

 Survey is made available to the Land Office in its administration of 

 the land laws. 



CLASSiriCATION BY THE GEOLOGICAL SURVEY. 

 SISTOBICAIi SKETCH. 



Although the act organizing the Geological Survey definitely im- 

 posed upon the Director the duty of classifying the public lands, it 

 was many years before the records of the organization contained a 

 sufficient fund of information to be of great use in public-land 

 administration. During its first quarter of a century the Survey 

 devoted its energies almost entirely to gathering scientific data re- 

 garding the whole of the United States, and only within the last 

 six or seven years has the immense fund of information so gathered 

 been applied in a systematic way to the solution of public-land 

 problems. During the early period there were perhaps but two 

 practical applications of the Survey's work to land classification. 

 The result of the first application was the segregation of reservoir-^ 

 sites under the act of October 2, 1888 (25 Stat., 527), to which refer- 

 ence has already been made. Congress in 1891 restored all the 

 lands that had been segregated under this act except tfe-arreas 

 actually needed for the construction of reservoirs, which still re- 

 main segregated as reservoir sites and are not subject to entry. The 

 second application was connected with the administration of the 

 reclamation act by the Geological Survey. Many withdrawals of 

 lands to be included in reclamation projects were made by the Sur- 

 vey prior to the separation from it of the Reclamation Service. With 

 these two exceptions the Geological Survey devoted its energies to 

 gathering data rather than to applying the data gathered to the 

 classification of public lands until the year 1906. Since that date 

 the Survey has been actively engaged in land-classification work. 

 The cooperative agreement whereby certain types of information are 

 made available to the Land Office in its administration of individual 



