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Show 34 PHOTOGRAPHS. As usual, a photographer, in the person of Mr. T. H. O'Sullivan, who has accompanied the expedition for the third season, has been added to one of the parties, and the stock of negatives has been increased by other characteristic views of scenery, ruins, and groups of Indians. During the year a few selected sets of landscape and stereoscopic views have been printed under the approval of the houorable Secretary of War; only sufficient in number, however, for the use of the War Department, the Engineer Bureau, and this office. CONCLUSION. In the conclusion of my last annual report ( see Appendix FF of the Annual Report of the Chief of Engineers for 1874) attention was invited to the necessity for the coutinuance of the survey and to some of the useful applications of its results. While continued at its present size and stage of development, it is perhaps unnecessary to set forth other advantages that permanently ensue from the aggregation and dissemination by Government and other publications of exact geographical knowledge of any portion of the country, only meager parts of which as yet have been mapped with even tolerable accuracy; yet it may not be inappropriate to state that the manuscript and published map results of the survey, which, since its organization, has been so directed as to embrace large areas of political divisions, the importance of which is increasing, will prove a substantial contribution to a general topographical map of the whole country. Information concerning new routes of travel throughout the areas traversed, with suggestions as to the opening of Government wagon-roads, and the probable routes for future railway communications, & c, together with lists of camps, distances, geographical positions, altitudes, & c, over present lines of supply, are all of valuable assistance to the Government in looking to a decrease of expenditure in the maintenance and supply of establishments in the territory of its wards, and add to the practical features of a work, which, although it might with undoubted advantage be continued vigorously until detailed topographical maps of the entire interior shall result, equal to those produced by the great trigonometrical aud topographical surveys of foreign powers, yet, inasmuch as the preservation of public utility lies at the foundation of duty in all Government undertakings, questions born of a desire to economize expenditures must needs be met and answered. It will be attempted from time to time, in a general manner and finally by statistics, to show that the money expended for refined geographical surveys is warranted by the economic value of the information gained for the use of the War Department, alone, in directing its operations, and that the indirect values of the maps and reports to the other Departments of the Government, and to the country at large, are attained at no cost to the public purse. The act appropriating for the continuance of the survey admitting of the prosecution with the preseut force in any part of the United States west of the hundredth meridian, the area selected for the season was suggested in the project submitted under your direction, which was approved by yourself and by the honorable Secretary of War. In future, sections lying adjacent to the Mexican border should be entered in winter and early spring. No parties have been so far placed |