Page:The Journal of geology (IA journalofgeology21894univers).pdf/447
Major Powell's administration has been a very notable one, and will doubtless stand forth even more distinctively as we recede from it in time and see it in perspective when its greater outlines will be better defined and its details will fall into their places as parts of the whole. From a comparatively small corps of workers, with an inadequate appropriation, trammeled by legislative restrictions and uncertainties, and embarrassed by untoward inheritances from three inharmonious territorial surveys, the organization has grown to be perhaps the largest and most productive of official geological surveys. Its very strength has indeed been an occasion of criticism on the part of some who have conceived themselves to be unfavorably affected by its great influence.
One of the most notable characteristics of the administration has been the large consideration given to the differentiation of investigative work. To a degree perhaps never before equaled in governmental work facilities have been afforded for the careful and broad investigation of special subjects of a fundamental nature. A portion of the results of these studies have appeared in the special papers of the annual reports, in the monographs, and in the correlation papers, but a considerable portion are yet to be issued.
Externally, perhaps the most conspicuous feature of Major Powell's administration has been the great prominence given to topographic work. If this work be conceived as subserving no other function than that to which topographic maps were usually put previous to the current decade, it might well be doubted whether so large a proportion of the resources at the command of the Survey were wisely given to this part of the work, and the question of ratio and proportion may be a pertinent one in any case, but it is necessary to a proper interpretation of the policy of the Survey to note that an important evolution of geological science has been in progress, and that topographic and physiographic factors now play a part in good geological work that they have never played before. Physiographic geology has had a new birth, and has taken an important place among the