Annual Report of the United States Geological Survey, Volume 1

Front Cover
U.S. Government Printing Office, 1880 - Geology
 

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases

Popular passages

Page 3 - And all collections of rocks, minerals, soils, fossils, and objects of natural history, archieology, and ethnology, made by the Coast and Interior Survey, the Geological Survey, or by any other parties for the Government of the United States, when no longer needed for investigations in progress, shall be deposited in the National Museum.
Page 5 - I have therefore concluded that the intention of Congress was to begin a rigid scientific classification of the lands of the national domain, not for purposes of aiding the machinery of the General Land Office, by furnishing a basis of sale, but for the general information of the people of the country, and to produce a series of land maps which should show all those features upon which intelligent agriculturists, miners, engineers, and timbermen might hereafter base their operations, and which would...
Page 3 - And that the Director and members of the Geological Survey shall have no personal or private interests in the lands or mineral wealth of the region under survey, and shall execute no surveys or examinations for private parties or corporations...
Page 3 - That this officer shall have the direction of the Geological Survey, and the classification of the public lands, and examination of the geological structure, mineral resources, and products of the national domain.
Page 4 - Congress, even then, hardly more than placed the Federal work on a par with that prosecuted by several of the wealthier States. During the years when the Federal geologists were following the hurried and often painful marches of the Western explorers. many States inaugurated and brought to successful issue State surveys whose results are of dignity and value.
Page 74 - Today no one knows, with the slightest approach to accuracy, the status of the mineral industry, either technically, as regards the progress and development making in methods, or statistically, as regards the sources, amounts, and valuations of the various productions. Statesmen and economists, in whose hands rest the subjects of tariff and taxation, have no better sources of information than the guesses of newspapers and the scarcely less responsible estimates of officials who possess no adequate...
Page 12 - ... qualifications of the applicant. Applicants for appointment under the division of general geology are required to furnish proper evidence of a good working knowledge of mathematics, physics, chemistry, geology, and mineralogy. Such evidence will consist of degrees of universities, or the testimony of experts in the required branches, or the result of a written examination. Applicants for appointment under the division of mining geology must furnish equivalent evidence of a working knowledge of...
Page 7 - ... west of the Blue Mountains, and all of California except the desert region lying east of the Sierra Nevada and south of the 38th parallel. Mr. Arnold Hague, as geologist in charge, has his headquarters at San Francisco. The director states that " as soon as the work upon the canons and plateaus of Colorado is done, it is intended to discontinue that division and to divide it on the line of the Colorado River between the divisions of the Rocky Mountains and. that of the Great Basin. The corps...
Page 73 - Utah from a well- watered and green area to a country wholly desert, except when reclaimed by the enterprise of man. Mr. Gilbert's volume is illustrated by topographical maps of the extinct lake, and numerous maps and diagrams showing the geological action of the receding waters. DIXOCERATA. A monograph on an extinct order of Ungulates.
Page 5 - Interior dated November 1, 1880. In this discussion he states that — Two special and distinct branches of duty are imposed upon the Director of the Geological Survey — (1) the classification of the public land and (2) the examination of the geological structure and mineral resources. As regards the classification of the public lands, the text of the law leaves an uncertainty whether this classification is intended to be a scientific exposition of the kinds of lands embraced in the national domain,...

Bibliographic information