DEVELOPMENT OF OEGANIZATION POE LAND CLASSIFICATION. 15 



be used only for studies of water available for use on specific projects. 

 The work of the division of hydrography therefore did not cease with 

 the organization of the Eeclamation Service but has been continued 

 in the Geological Survey by the water-resources branch. 



Developments within the geologic branch since its organization 

 have likewise marked a steady evolution from its original type. The 

 branch has grown, its appropriations and its force have increased, 

 and its work has been more closely subdivided and specialized and 

 has attained greater refinement in all departments; and while this 

 evolution has been taking place it has steadily accumulated a great 

 mass of facts bearing on the geology and mineral resources of the 

 United States. 



The material accumulated since their organization by the field 

 branches of the Survey — ^the geologic branch, the topographic branch, 

 the water-resources branch and its predecessors, the irrigation survey 

 and the division of hydrography — constitutes a vast body of infor- 

 mation concerning the public domain — its geology, its geography, 

 and its water supplies and the engineering features that control the 

 distribution of these supplies. This store of information is by no 

 means complete, for many problems are still untouched and many 

 areas are unexamined, but nevertheless the archives of the bureau 

 contain a greater mass of material of the kind required for classify- 

 ing the remaining lands of the public domain into types that accord 

 with their various uses than exists anywhere else in the public records. 



With the accumulation of the data indicated the Department of 

 the Interior and its bureaus have become increasingly ready and will- 

 ing to call on the Survey for assistance in that phase of public-land 

 administration which requires as its basis a classification of the 

 lands into the types recognized in the statutes. 



The requests made by the department for information contained 

 in the Survey's records were at first sporadic; later they became 

 more frequent and numerous, so that it became necessary to create 

 within the Survey itself an organization to assemble this infoi-ma- 

 tion systematically r d transmit it to the department and to other 

 bureaus in the department in such form as would be most readily 

 applicable to the solution of administrative problems. This organi- 

 zation was named the land-classification board and was first formed 

 as a section of the geologic branch and finally made a branch of the 

 Survey coordinate in functions and responsibility with the field 

 branches whose evolution has been briefly outlined. 



The Survey's organization for classifying the public lands con- 

 sists, then, fundamentally and primarily, of three field branches — 

 geologic, topographic, and water resources — and finally of the re- 

 cently organized office branch known as the land-classification board, 



