Though the Geological Survey has extended its operations over the whole United States, its largest activities have always been directed toward the exploration and development of the newer territory in the public-land States. All four of its directors had their field training in the West: the name of Major Powell, who succeeded King in 1880, is inseparably connected with scientific exploration; Charles D. Walcott, who was Director from 1894 to 1907, the period of the Survey’s greatest expansion, made the largest contribution to the Paleozoic stratigraphy and paleontology of the West; and the present Director spent seven field seasons in the Northern Cascades and one in a mining district in Utah. The scope of the activities both East and West as developed during the 39 years since the establishment of the new bureau can be best described, perhaps, in terms of its present functions as expressed in the organization of to-day. The growth of the Survey is measured in the increase of annual appropriation from $106,000 in 1879–80 to the amount available for the current year—$1,925,520, not including half a million dollars from War Department appropriations being spent in the topographic work of the Survey. The corresponding increase in personnel has been from 39, listed in the first report, to 911 holding regular appointments at the present time, divided among the different branches as follows: A scientific force of 173 in the Geologic Branch, 169 in the Water Resources Branch, 71 in the Topographic Branch, and 15 in the Land Classification Board, with a clerical force of 168 divided among the same branches, and the remainder the technical and clerical employees of the publication and administrative branches. These personnel statistics are not expressive of normal conditions, since a large number of the topographic engineers are commissioned officers and thus are not included on the civilian roll, while, on the other hand, the classification of the stock-raising homestead lands makes the technical force of the Water Resources Branch unusually large this year.