Thus it is not a correct statement of the principle of the separation of powers to say that it prohibits absolutely the performance by one department of acts which, by their essential nature, belong to another. Rather, the correct statement is that a department may constitutionally exercise any power, whatever its essential nature, which has, by the Constitution, been delegated to it, but that it may not exercise powers not so constitutionally granted, which, from their essential nature, do not fall within its division of governmental functions, unless such powers are properly incidental to the performance by it of its own appropriate functions.

From the rule, as thus stated, it appears that in very many cases the propriety of its exercise of a power by a given department does not depend upon whether, in its essential nature, the power is executive, legislative, or judicial, but whether it has been specifically vested by <the Constitution in that department, or whether it is properly incidental to the performance of the appropriate functions of the department into whose hands its exercise has been given.

Generally speaking, it may be said that when a power is not peculiarly and distinctly legislative, executive, or judicial, it lies within the authority of the legislature to determine where its exercise shall be vested.