PROFESSOR JOHN W. POWELL. 397 



This work, which was published in quarto form and illustrated, as Part 

 I (Chapters I to IX) of the original volume of "Exploration of the 

 Colorado River of the West and its Tributaries, explored in 18G9, 

 1870, 1871, and 1872, under the Direction of the Smithsonian Institu- 

 tion " (1875), consists of the personal narrative, from Professor Pow- 

 ell's diary, of the celebrated voyage down the unexplored river. 



2. " On the Physical Features of the Colorado Valley." This forms 

 Part II of the same work. 



3. "Geology of the Uintah Mountains, with Atlas" (1876). 



4. " Introduction to the Study of Indian Languages, with Words, 

 Phrases, and Sentences to be collected " (1877). 



5. " Report on the Lands of the Arid Region of the United States, 

 etc., with Maps " (1879). This is a highly important public document, 

 and one with the contents of which the country generally should be 

 familiar. Though containing able chapters by Mr. G. K. Gilbert, 

 Captain C. E. Dutton, Professor A. H. Thompson, and Mr. Willis 

 Drummond, Jr., it is, in its general plan and in the chief part of its 

 matter, the work of Professor Powell. 



6. " Introduction to the Study of Indian Languages, etc. Second 

 edition with Charts " (1880). We enter this work as distinct from 

 the first edition, published in 1877 under the same title, because, with 

 the exception of the schedules, notes to collectors, and remarks on the 

 alphabet, its matter is wholly new. Though small, it is one of the 

 most important of Professor Powell's contributions to science. 



Professor Powell is a member of the National Academy of Sciences 

 and a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of 

 Science, and presided over the Biological Section of the latter in 1879. 

 He has been the President of the Anthropological Society of Wash- 

 ington since its organization, and his annual addresses before it are 

 published in its " Transactions." 



Personally, he is of most agreeable manners, frank, genial, and cor- 

 dial under all circumstances, and possessed of great individual mag- 

 netism. Though social by nature, he has a strong preference for 

 persons of culture, and especially of independence of thought, as his 

 friends, and seems to possess the tact of securing such without giving 

 offense to others. It is a favorite theory of his that, to observe well, 

 one must also think deeply, and that observation without theory is 

 necessarily sterile ; and these ideas he carries into practical affairs in 

 the selection of his assistants in all branches of his service. His mind 

 is in the highest degree realistic, and he looks upon all classes of phe- 

 nomena from the objective point of view. In anthropology he belongs 

 to the strictly scientific school, represented by Mr. Lewis IT. Morgan, 

 which rejects the imaginative and poetical accounts of the lower races. 

 He accepts the doctrine of evolution, but has not failed to perceive in- 

 adequacies in the systematic developments which some of its disciples 

 have sought to make of certain of its minor details. 



