Mr. POMEROY. As we progress in our surveys west it becomes a matter of more and more interest every year to know What proportion of our public lands are mineral and what are agricultural. Formerly our surveys were carried on in the prairies where there were no minerals, and the attention of the surveyor general and of the ComrGLO of necessity was not directed to the question of minerals; but now our work has been prosecuted so far into the mountains that it becomes a matter of great importance for the reason that we fre nently find whole districts of country declared by the surveyor general to be mineral, and thereby taken out of the market, so that settlers under the homestead and preemption laws cannot settle on it, when there is not an acre in 1,000that is reall mineral. The ComrGLO ought to have some means of ascertaining and deciding that fact. He has got the machinery all organized; he has a register and receiver in every district; he has in his employment persons who can furnish him with this information at very little expense. If you get up an independent machinery for this purpose it will cost 30 times as much to get this information as it will cost to get it through the GLO, a bureau alrea y organized. I think it is a matter of very great importance in all the new States that some definite information be had there as to what land is mineral and what agricultural. I have traveled for a whole day over a country calledminernl, although there was not an acre of mineral in it. We cannot settle it; it is shut out from market. Public ente rises for which grants of land had been made going through those sections can get nothing, because some man ran over the country a few years before, and said it was all mineral, and so reported to the GLO, and that man happened to be surveyor general. This has worked enormous evil in the new States. There should be some means of ascertaining and some means of deciding the question rather than leave it to a surveyor General who never, perhaps, goes out of his cities, but sublets the whole work, and somebody says that tract embracing 100 miles is mineral. On such indefinite information as that we have been going on year after year de claring sections of our new States mineral to the great injury of the settlements, to the great injury of the community, and doing no good to the Government.,