The first duty laid upon the Director of the Geological Survey in the law of 1879 was “the classification of the public lands,” and this phrase undoubtedly expressed the idea of the committee of the National Academy. The same legislation, however, contained provision for the further consideration by a commission of the classification and valuation of the public lands, as also recommended by the National Academy. Thus the decision of Director King that the classification intended by Congress was scientific and was intended for general information and not to aid the Land Office in the disposition of land by sale or otherwise was really based upon the deliberate opinion of the Public Lands Commission, of which he was a member, that classification would seriously impede rapid settlement of the unoccupied lands. Nearly forty years later those who are intrusted with the land-classification work of the Geological Survey recognize this familiar argument, which undoubtedly had much more force in that earlier stage of the utilization of the Nation’s resources of land.[106] The conception of land classification as a business policy on the part of the Government as a landed proprietor belongs rather to this day of more intensive development. At present current public-land legislation calls for highest use, and hence official investigation of natural values and possibilities must precede disposition. This type of mineral and hydrographic classification of public lands has been in progress in increasing amount since 1906, so that now the Geological Survey is the kind of scientific adviser to the Secretary of the Interior and Commissioner of the General Land Office that may have been contemplated by the National Academy of Sciences in 1878. It is plain, however, to everyone at all conversant with Western conditions that the recent land-classification surveys in Wyoming, for instance—detailed geologic surveys which form the basis for the valuation of public coal lands in 40–acre units—would have possessed no utility in 1871, when the coal-land law was passed but when the demand for railroad fuel had just begun.