Page:U.S. Department of the Interior Annual Report 1880.djvu/53

Rh by G. K. Gilbert, geologist in charge. “The Dinocerata, a monograph oil an extinct order of ungulates,” by Prof. O. C. Marsh, palæontologist.

The act of March 3, 1879, providing for the organization of the Geological Survey contains the following clause: “For the expenses of the Geological Survey and the classification of the public lands and examining geological structure, mineral resources, and products of the national domain, to be expended under the direction of the Secretary of the Interior, one hundred thousand dollars.” Careful not to extend the Geological Survey beyond these limits which Congress may have intended to impose upon its operations, the term “national domain” was, as above mentioned, construed to apply only to the public land States and Territories, although geological investigations in the States which no longer contain public lands are equally interesting and important to industry as well as science. In view of the uncertainty of the meaning of the term “national domain” the Appropriations Committee of the House of Representatives caused to be offered in the House of Eepresentatives resolution No. 116 extending the field of the Geological Survey over the whole of the United States. That resolution was promptly passed in the House, but is still pending in the Senate. Not feeling warranted in anticipating the action of the Senate by practical operations outside of the public land States and Territories, but desirous of preparing for such work if Congress should grant authority for it, the Director of the Geological Survey has laid down in his report his plan of dividing that part of the United States east of the 102d meridian into divisions in which the work might severally be carried on to advantage. One division would embrace Maryland, Delaware, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, and the New England States; the other West Virginia, Virginia, North and South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Tennessee, and Kentucky—the two together the great Appalachian system of mountains extending from New Brunswick to Alabama. The great basin of the Mississippi is also divided into two grand divisions: first the division of the North Mississippi, bounded west of the Mississippi and the south by a line including Missouri and Kansas to the intersection of the 39th parallel with the 102d meridian. East of the Mississippi River the Ohio forms the dividing line between the northern and southern districts.

I beg leave to call the especial attention of Congress to the remarks made by the Director on the important benefits which the extension of the Geological Survey over the whole area of the United States would confer upon the industrial interests of the American people. He sets forth that in the realm of mineral productions the only efforts made to acquire any positive knowledge have been the highly useful but feebly endowed work of the late mining commissioners, whose investigations were suffered to end for lack of appropriations; that to-day no one knows, with the slightest approach to accuracy, the status of the mining industry, either technically, as regards the progress and development making in methods, or statistically, as regards the sources, amounts, and valuation