26 THE UNITED STATES GEOLOGICAL SURVEY. [bull.227. 
The next year a division of correlation was established, and a little 
later the Florida and New Jersey divisions, making in all 15 divisions 
in geology. The heads of these divisions reported to the Director 
until 1889, when the office of chief geologist was established. 
(3) In 1893 all the geologic divisions were abolished and the work 
was organized under separate independent parties, each party chief 
reporting to the Director. This form of organization continued from 
1893 to 1899, during which time the number of parties increased from 
23 to 58. During this period details both of administration and of 
scientific supervision were attended to by the Director. 
(4) With the increase of his duties the Director, in 1900, found it 
necessary to change the form of organization. Various sections were 
established under section chiefs, who had scientific supervision but no 
administrative control over the work. The latter remained with the 
Director until 1902, when the office of geologist in charge of geology 
was created and the administrative control of the division was trans- 
ferred to that office. At the same time paleontology was included 
with the division of geology. 
As already stated, the character of the early work of the Survey 
was determined in part by the problems inherited from previous organi- 
zations and in part by the urgent demand, particularly from mine 
operators, for the economic investigation of various mining districts. 
Thus, of the five divisions originally composing the Survey organiza- 
tion, three were devoted to the completion of studies already begun 
under previous organizations, namely, the investigation of the geology 
of the Colorado Plateaus, which had been begun under the Powell 
survey; the study of the Quaternary lakes in the Great Basin region, 
which had been started by the geologists of the Wheeler survey; and 
the geology of Montana, which was left incomplete by the Hayden 
survey. Three new investigations were begun, one in each of the 
three mining districts that were then most important — the Washoe 
district, containing the famous Comstock lode; the Eureka district, 
and the Leadville district. With the extension of the geologic work 
to the Eastern States, gradually less and less attention was given to 
the economic geology, and of the 15 divisions which existed in 1890 
fewer than a third were engaged in work which had a direct economic 
bearing. The work was directed more largely to the investigation of 
the broad problems of geology as a scientific basis for the preparation 
of the geologic map of the United States. This work, which was the 
largest of its kind ever undertaken by a Government organization, 
required careful consideration and thorough investigation of many 
fundamental problems in geology which have only an indirect bearing 
upon the development of economic resources. The first folio of this 
atlas was issued in 1894, fifteen years after the organization of the 
Survey and eleven years after the necessary legal authority for the 
preparation of the map had been secured. (See pp. 98-103.) 
