EDITORIAL COMMENT. During the spring of 1900 the Director of the U. S. Geological Survey has planned, with the approval of the Secretary of the Interior, an important reorganization of the geologic branch. In order that the significance of this step should be appreciated in all its bearings, it is desirable briefly to review the history of the administration and scientific control within the survey. In the first annual report, Mr. King set forth a plan of organization based on grand geographic and geologie provinces. The work being then restricted to the national domain west of the 101st meridian, four divisions were established, that of the Rocky mountains under Emmons, that of the Colorado under Dutton, that of the Great Basin under Gilbert, and of the Pacific under Hague. Each of these divisions corresponded to a province within which the geologic phenomena had a certain unity of history and character, and it was wisely argued that the work in each should be directed by a geologist familiar with the special problems of the area entrusted to him. At the same time, the limited appropriations of the survey and the adopted policy of surveying the most important mining districts led to a concentration of effort upon Leadville, Eureka, and the Comstock lode, so that initially comparatively little progress was made in solving the broad geologic problems presented to each division. The principal contributions which the West yielded to the philosophy of the science were made by the surveys through whose consolidation the Geological Survey was created. With the growth of the survey and the addition to its corps of many of the leading minds in American geology, more numerous geographic divisions were established and their limits became more artificial. Thus, in the sixth annual report we find enumerated, in addition to the ones first established, the division of Glacial Geology (Chamberlin), the division of Volcanic Geology (Dutton), the division of the Crystalline Schists of the Appalachian and Lake Superior Regions (Pumpelly and Irving respectively), the Appalachian Region (Gilbert), and the Yellowstone Park (Hague). As divisions became more numerous and restricted, the administrative machinery became |