By 1878, when the Fortieth Parallel Survey had completed the work planned by its chief, three of these independent surveys still contended for Federal support and for scientific occupation of the most attractive portions of the Western country. Unrestrained competition of this kind, even in the public service, proves as wasteful as unregulated competition in private business,[103] and Congress appealed to the National Academy of Sciences for a plan for Government surveys to “secure the best results at the least possible cost.” Under instructions by Congress the National Academy considered all the work relating to scientific surveys and reported to Congress a plan prepared by a special committee, whose membership included the illustrious names of Marsh, Dana, Rogers, Newberry, Trowbridge, Newcomb, and Agassiz. This report, which was adopted by the Academy with only one dissenting vote, grouped all surveys—geodetic, topographic, land parceling, and economic—under two distinct heads, surveys of mensuration and surveys of geology. At that time five independent organizations in three different departments were carrying on surveys of mensuration, and the Academy recommended that all such work be combined under the Coast and Geodetic Survey with the new name Coast and Interior Survey. For the investigation of the natural resources of the public domain and the classification of the public lands a new organization was proposed, the United States Geological Survey. The functions of these two surveys and of a third coordinate bureau in the Interior Department, the Land Office, were carefully defined and their interrelations fully recognized and provided for in the plan presented to Congress. Viewed in the light of 39 years of experience the National Academy plan would be indorsed by most of us as eminently practical, and the report stands as a splendid example of public service rendered by America’s leading scientists. The legislation which embodied the entire plan, however, failed of passage in Congress.