nance of naval hospitals; also with the care and treatment of sick and invalid seamen belonging to vessels of the navy and of the sick belonging to the marine corps. It also attends to the purchase, supply, and preservation of medical stores and surgical appliances to be used in hospitals and on vessels at sea.

1095. It also gives direction to the medical treatment of officers and men at naval stations and on board naval vessels. It receives reports and compiles statistics as to diseases and sickness in the naval service. It gives attention to the ventilation and proper hygienic condition of sea-going vessels of the navy, and prepares estimates for appropriations for this branch of the service.

CHAPTER XXIV.

THE DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR.

1096. This department was created by act of March 3, 1849, and is accordingly the last of the executive departments in the order of rank and date.

Its head is the Secretary of the Interior. Provision is made by law for an Assistant, who is required to perform such duties as may be prescribed by his superior.

One of the Assistants of the Attorney-General is detailed as the Solicitor of this department, and performs such duties as are assigned him by the head thereof.

The statutes provide for a Chief Clerk, whose duties are mainly of a supervisory character, as explained in section 29 hereinbefore, in treating of the office of Chief Clerk generally.

1097. This department comprises the following-named bureaus, so constituted by law. These bureaus, with the exception of two, have been in times past attached to different departments of the Government, and were transferred to the Department of the Interior by the act creating the latter:

1. The General Land Office.

2. The Office of Indian Affairs.

3. The Office of the Commissioner of Pensions.

4. The Patent Office.

5. The Office of Education.

6. The Office of the Auditor of Railroad Accounts.

7. The Census Office.

1098. The Interior Department is next to the Treasury

in the extent of its grasp of the material and practical interests of the people. It conducts the surveys of the public lands, administers the intricate system growing out of the pre-emption, homestead, timber-culture, and land-grant laws, and directs the sale and disposal of lands pertaining to our vast public domain. It manages all our relations with the Indian tribes. It directs and controls the issue of patents to inventors. It executes the various and complicated pension and bounty laws. It is charged with the collection and diffusion of information respecting the organization and management of school systems, and with the promotion of the cause of education throughout the country.

THE SECRETARY OF THE INTERIOR.

1099. The Secretary of the Interior is charged generally with the supervision of the public business under the following heads, viz.:

1. The census, when directed by law.

2. The public lands, including mines.

3. The Indians.

4. Pensions and bounty lands.

5. Patents for inventions.

6. The custody and distribution of public documents.

7. Education.

8. The Government Hospital for the Insane.

9. Freedmen's Hospital, District of Columbia.

10. Railroad accounts.

The duties in respect of these branches of business are performed, by his direction and under his regulations, mainly through the several bureaus before mentioned, but the statutes invest him with specific functions and require duties specifically of him, as follow:

1100. He is required to keep in proper books a complete inventory of all public property under his control in

the buildings, offices, and grounds occupied by his department. (R. S., § 197.)

1101. He is required to exercise all the powers and perform all the duties, in relation to the Territories of the United States, that were, prior to March 1, 1873, by law or by custom, exercised and performed by the Secretary of State. (R. S., § 442.)

1102. As explained hereafter, he exercises certain supervisory powers relative to the taking and returning the census of the United States. (Act March 3, 1879.)

1103. He is required to sign all requisitions for the advance or payment of money out of the Treasury upon estimates or accounts for expenditures of public business assigned by law to this department, subject to adjustment and control by the proper accounting officers of the Treasury. (R. S., § 444.)

1104. He is required to make annual reports to Congress showing the nature, character, and amount of all claims presented to him during the preceding year, under laws or treaty stipulations, for compensation on account of depredations committed by Indians, whether allowed by him or not, and to submit the evidence upon which any action on his part was based; also reports showing the quantity and kind of the copies of public journals, books, and documents which have been received by him for distribution on behalf of the Government, and showing also the time when, the place where, and the person to whom any of the same have been distributed and delivered during the preceding year. (R. S., § 445.)

1105. It is made his duty to prepare and cause to be published such regulations as he may deem proper, prescribing the manner of presenting claims arising under laws or treaty stipulations for compensation on account of depredations committed by the Indians, and the degree

and character of the evidence necessary to support such claims; also to carefully investigate all such claims as may be presented, subject to the regulations prepared by him. No payments can be made on account of such claims without a specific appropriation by Congress. (R. S., § 466.)

1106. He is required to adopt and enforce necessary rules to prohibit the sale of arms or ammunition within any district or country occupied by uncivilized or hostile Indians. (R. S., § 467.)

1107. He is charged with receiving, arranging, and the safe-keeping for distribution, and with the distribution to the persons entitled by law to receive the same, all printed journals of the two Houses of Congress, and all other books and documents of every nature whatever already or hereafter directed by law to be printed or purchased for the use of the Government, except such as are directed to be printed or purchased for the particular use of Congress, or of either House thereof, or for the particular use of the Executive or of any of the departments. (R. S., § 497.)

1108. He is required to furnish the Department of Justice, as they may be published, a sufficient number of the reports of the Supreme Court of the United States, for distribution by that department to such officers of the United States courts as are entitled to them. (R. S., § 498.)

1109. It is provided that under his direction a register shall be kept of all publications received for safe-keeping and distribution, showing the quantity and kind at any time received and the time when, the place where, and the person to whom any of such documents have been distributed.

Except when otherwise directed by law, he is authorized to deliver such publications only on the written requisitions of the heads of departments, Secretary of the Senate, Clerk of the House of Representatives, Librarian of Congress, and of other officers and persons legally entitled to receive the same. (R. S., §§ 499, 500.)