realized by each State from its educational land grants, have formed the subject of another report now in hand.

The preparation of the report on industrial and high art education in the United States, including the subject of drawing in the public schools, the history and present condition of all public art educational institutions in the United States, as well as of all public art collections, is substantially ready for the press.

The Commissioner alludes to the interruption of work caused by the recent removal of his office to new quarters, but observes that the rooms now assigned, though inadequate, afford some additional advantages, especially as they allow him to bring the collection illustrating the condition, progress, methods, and appliances of education belonging to his office into close proximity to its library. The benefits to accrue from a national collection illustrating the improvements in these appliances can hardly be overestimated. The valuable library has now more commodious quarters. Since its removal, the books, numbering 10,000 volumes, and nearly the entire collection of pamphlets, numbering 25,000 (with 10,000 duplicates), have been re-examined, classified and arranged, and rendered convenient for use.

During the year the office has issued Circular of Information No 1, 1878, a pamphlet of thirty-six pages, relating to the training of teachers in Germany; Circular No. 2, 1878, relating to education in London, is now in press. The special articles which appeared in the education report for 1876 has been reprinted, in order to supply many requests for them.

The office has sent about 20,000 communications and 15,000 packages of documents; it has received about 24,000 communications and 6,000 packages of documents.

The tendency to modify instruction so as to connect with it industrial training has increased, and several special schools for this purpose have been established. The colleges of agriculture and the mechanic arts have supplied successfully many wants of this kind.

The pecuniary embarrassment of the country has continued to reduce the amount of money expended for school purposes. Reduced salaries in some places have, in the opinion of the Commissioner, had the effect of increasing the number of incompetent teachers, and in many communities the total lack of funds has caused the schools to be closed.

The friends of educational progress both in France and this country looked forward with interest to the International Exposition at Paris; and particularly so, because education was made so prominent a part of the scheme. Dr. John D. Philbrick, of Boston, was requested to take charge of the educational section of the American exhibit, and the Bureau of Education afforded him all the assistance it could. The result of the exposition has been very gratifying. Although the section of education occupied a space of only 550 square feet, the number of premiums awarded to the exhibitors was 121-about one-sixth of the whole

number awarded to exhibitors of the United States; and of these, 27 were gold medals, three of which were awarded to the Bureau of Education. The Commissioner reports that the Government of France has established in the ministry of public instruction a bureau similar in its objects to the United States Bureau of Education, and that the federal government of Switzerland proposes to do the same.

The pleasant intercourse of the office with foreign educators continues. Many important letters have been received and answered. Forty-five foreign periodicals are examined regularly, and important works and reports on education in all the languages of Western Europe are procured as soon as possible, are carefully read, and the most valuable parts are translated or summarized.

Officers in charge of school systems and schools in the regions lately afflicted by the yellow fever report that it has been impossible to give instruction up to the present time; that the orphan asylums are overcrowded, and that there are many destitute children left parentless by the fever, for whom no provision has been made as yet. Correspondence has been had through the office with a view to a partial relief by their reception into institutions for destitute children in other parts of the country which may be so situated as to be able to receive them.

The Commissioner urgently renews his recommendation that appropriations be made sufficient to do the work of the office with reasonable facility, and that Congress devise some plan for the aid of education throughout the country.

CENSUS.

The near approach of the tenth census renders it important that the question of a new census law should be considered by Congress at its next session. If the additional legislation which seems to be required to secure statistical results commensurate with the expense of enumeration be put over to the first regular session of the Forty-sixth Congress, it must suffer from inadequate consideration and hasty action, while the postponement of the initial preparations to so late a date will inevitably enhance the cost of the census and impair the value of the returns.

A work of such extent and complexity, the administrative machinery of which has to be built up for the occasion wholly from the ground, whose agents, or the greater part of them, can, from the nature of the case, have had no experience of such duties, should be carefully planned; every arrangement should be made considerately; every appointment should be thoroughly canvassed; every spot where exceptional liability to failure or error exists should be known and covered by special provisions; and the central statistical office should stand organized and ready to take up the returns as fast as they come in, to sift and sort them with intelligence and without delay, and to digest, compile, and publish them in the briefest time compatible with accuracy. All this can be fully and satisfactorily done only in case

ample time is allowed, after the passage of the act, before the commencement of the enumeration. If the department is to remain uncertain whether the census is to be taken under the act of 1850 or under a new law till the February of the census year—as was the case in 1870-the work must suffer both through enhanced cost and through impaired value.

As to the considerations which seem to demand new legislation, in the interest alike of economy and of the improvement of the statistical results, I respectfully refer to the report of the Superintendent of Census, which is annexed hereto.

The law of May 23, 1850, was passed in the very infancy of statistical science. In the period that has intervened the demands of Congress and the country for statistical information have greatly increased, and new schedules and new inquiries are needed to satisfy those demands.

Better methods of enumeration have become known, through our own experience at three censuses taken under the act of 1850, and through the experiences of other nations in conducting similar services. Even the conditions of the country have greatly changed. While our population was more easily classified in 1850, it now contains elements which vastly increase the labor of enumeration and multiply the liabilities to error. Large numbers of immigrants have been added to our population on the one hand, and five millions of freedmen, who were formerly reported at the census promptly and intelligently by their masters, are now left to speak for themselves under the gravest disadvantages. The very conditions of life among our people have undergone great changes. The interior movements of population have become more rapid and extensive, and half a million of square miles are now settled more or less densely, which in 1850 were unsurveyed, or even unexplored.

As the census of a great nation is a very practical work, into which theory and preconceived notions should enter as little as possible, it would seem that such great changes of condition, as well as the advances made meanwhile in the science of legislation and in the art of government, justify and require a new census law.

The duties of the Census Office, such as the correspondence supplying information asked for, and care of records and documents, have been satisfactorily performed during the year by the clerk in charge. No settlements have been made of the unpaid claims of the assistant marshals at the eighth and ninth censuses owing to the failure of Congress to provide for their payment.

It is to be hoped that such provision will be made at the coming session, in accordance with the recommendation of the department.

GEOLOGICAL AND GEOGRAPHICAL SURVEY.

During the past season the work of the United States Geological and Geographical Survey, under the direction of Prof. F. V. Hayden, was continued northward into portions of Wyoming and Montana Territories.

The usual appropriation for the survey was not passed by Congress until July, rendering the field season very short, yet the results were of considerable magnitude and of much importance.

The survey proper was divided into four parties, one of which was devoted to the extension of the primary triangulation to the northward, two were engaged in topographic and geologic work, and the fourth performed photographic and special geologic duty. All the parties left the Union Pacific Railroad from Point of Rocks and Green River Stations about July 25, and proceeded northward toward the Yellowstone National Park. To the second division was assigned the duty of making an exhaustive survey of the park and its surroundings, and to the third the exploration of the Wind River Range and the Snake River country. The primary triangulation was extended over about twelve thousand square miles. Eight primary stations were occupied, among them Wind River, Fremont's and Grand Teton Peaks, which are among the most difficult and hazardous of ascent on the continent. This division would have performed double this amount of work had a band of hostile Indians not robbed it of its entire outfit about the middle of the

season.

The second division made a very detailed survey of the National Park, securing the materials for the preparation of a topographical and geological map on a scale of one mile to one inch. The geologist not only studied the geology minutely, but also sketched every square mile of the area. An unusually interesting and valuable collection of volcanic rocks and hot-spring specimens was obtained. The entire collections of the survey, which are of a varied character, will amount to about three tons weight.

The third division explored with equal care the Wind River and Teton Ranges of mountains, a region of which comparatively little was previously known. The peak named by the survey Fremont's Peak was found to be over 14,000 feet in height above the sea, with no trace that any human being had ever previously reached its summit. Three complete glaciers were discovered on the east side of the Wind River Mountains, the first ever known to exist east of the Pacific coast. The old glaciated rocks and morainal deposits were found on a remarkably grand scale in both the Wind River and Teton Ranges.

The object of again surveying the Yellowstone Park was to bring it under the system of triangulation which had been employed with so much success in Colorado and to make the entire work uniform. All the old hot-spring basins were resurveyed in great detail, and several new ones were discovered and mapped. Soundings and temperatures of several thousand hot springs were taken. The history and habits of the geysers were carefully studied.

The photographer of the survey obtained over fifty fine views of the bowls and other curious ornamental details of the Hot Springs.

The results of the season's labors, though a short one, have been on

the whole very satisfactory. About 12,000 square miles of very difficult country were surveyed, much of it in minute detail, and a mass of obser vation secured for the twelfth annual report, which will make it of more general interest and value than any of the preceding.

The district assigned to this survey by this department for the next Atlas comprises all the area of the Territories of the United States north of latitude 41° 45', east of meridian 1170 and west of meridian 94°. It is estimated that the mapping of this area will occupy five years more, and when this is completed, the survey will have mapped over onefourth the territory of the United States west of the one hundredth meridian.

GEOGRAPHICAL AND GEOLOGICAL SURVEY OF THE ROCKY MOUNTAIN REGION.

Major Powell reports that early in July the parties of this survey again took the field. A new base-line has been measured at Kanab, in Southern Utah, on ground better adapted to the requirements of the trigonometric operations than the one formerly established in that vicinity. This line has been connected with the one previously measured at Gunnison by a complete chain of triangles having artificial points. Thus a geodetic basis has been given to the whole geographic work south of the 40th parallel sufficiently refined for all the purposes for which the survey is made. The topographic and geologic work has been prosecuted south and east of the Colorado River. District 106 has been completed and much work done in district 105. The topographic methods employed were essentially the same as those of the previous season, that is, the plane-table and orograph were used in conjunction, the results of each being complementary to the other.

The hypsometric work rests on the base at Kanab, which had been previously established by long series of barometric observations.

The region surveyed embraces the elevated plateaus south of the Grand Cañon of the Colorado, and the plateaus and desert valleys stretching to the eastward. Very little irrigable land has been found, less than one-fourth of one per cent., as the tributaries of the Colorado are all very small and the great river itself runs at a profound depth below the general surface of the country, so that it cannot be used. Extensive and valuable grazing lands are included in the survey and some valuable forests of pine, spruce, and fir, the extent and characteristics of which have been carefully determined.

As the work has progressed from year to year it has been found that important economic questions relating to the future industries of the far West demanded more thorough investigation. The mineral resources, the extent, and practicability of the irrigable lands, pasturage lands, and timber lands have been regarded as questions of prime importance, and the researches of the survey have been more and more directed to their solution.