academy of science] n g GEOLOGICAL SURVEY 133 



stages of development through which they must have passed as well as the later stages 

 through which they would have passed, had the shore processes continued to act for a longer 

 period, are as a rule not emphasized ; the treatment was explanatory but not evolutionary. 



In one respect the treatment of lake-shore processes is particularly instructive as illustrat- 

 ing the rightful place of violent agencies in uniformitarian geology; namely, the relation of 

 storms to the production of shore features. This is introduced by reference to the action of 

 river floods. After an explanation of the manner in which a running stream does its work, 

 it is shown that a flood gives to a stream — 



a transporting power scarcely to be compared with [that is, immensely greater than] that of the same stream 

 at its low stage, and it gives to the exceptional flood a power greatly in excess of the normal annual flood. Not 

 only is it true that the work accomplished in a few days during the height of the chief flood of the year is greater 

 than all that is accomplished during the remainder of the year, but it may even be true that the effect of the 

 maximum flood of the decade or generation or century surpasses the effects of all minor floods. ... In 

 littoral transportation the great storm bears the same relation to the minor storm and to the fair weather breeze. 

 The waves created by the great storm not only lift more detritus from each unit of the littoral zone, but they 

 act on a broader zone and they are competent to move larger masses. ... It follows that the habit of the 

 shore .... is determined by and adjusted to the great storm. I 



THE BONNEVILLE MONOGRAPH 



It had been planned that the first monograph of the national survey should be an account 

 of the Comstock lode at Virginia City, Nev., by Clarence King; but when that versatile geolo- 

 gist gave up the direction of the survey and turned his attention more to business affairs, he 

 appears to have given up the monograph also, and the first number of the series was thereupon 

 reserved for Gilbert's report on Lake Bonneville. But so greatly was his work upon it delayed 

 by office duties, as will be told on following pages, that it had been preceded, when at last 

 published in 1890, by 15 other monographs, among which was Russell's Lahontan. Its con- 

 tents have been sufficiently indicated by the preceding account of the observations and infer- 

 ences which it summarizes, so that no abstract of it is here necessary; but it may be charac- 

 terized as a whole. It represents, in the first place, Gilbert's most important, longest-continued 

 and fullest published investigation. His early Wheeler reports were fragmentary in various 

 respects; although the problems then encountered were numerous and novel, the field observa- 

 tions had been hurried and the conditions of publication were not attractive. The Henry 

 Mountains report for the Powell survey, although a satisfying effort to its author, represented 

 a relatively brief period of field study in Utah and an extraordinarily short period of writing 

 in Washington. Studies of Niagara and the Great Lakes, to be reviewed on later pages, were 

 continued intermittently for a good number of years, and were reported upon in several admi- 

 rable papers, but the whole of that fine story was never brought together in a single volume. 

 Of two later efforts made by Gilbert to return to the study of the basin ranges, the first, in 

 1901, was almost fruitless as far as publication is concerned, and the second, undertaken shortly 

 before his death, is represented only by an unfinished essay. Between the two efforts he did 

 a remarkable piece of work on the distribution of mining debris in California, which almost 

 rivaled his work in the Great Basin. The Bonneville monograph is the greater study; it is 

 Gilbert's masterpiece. 



In the second place the Bonneville report is by far the most thorough study of a large 

 quarternary lake in a now arid region that has yet been made in any part of the world, and 

 as such it sets a high standard up to which any later studies must attempt to rise. It is delib- 

 erate, thorough, compendious, both as to the record of observed facts and as to their theoretical 

 interpretation. In some cases the discussion is almost too deliberate, as Gilbert hi m self seems 

 to have sensed. He wrote in June, 1888, to a correspondent: 



In my Bonneville report I am discussing the correlation of the lake history with the ice [glacial] history in 

 a very full and I fear in a somewhat labored way. I try to bring up all the convergent lines of evidence and 

 leave no stone unturned. 



But be this as it may, the discussion of successive stages of Bonneville history expresses 

 the extraordinary balance of mental judgments in which Gilbert was, as has been well said, 



