134 GEOVE KAEL GILBERT— DAVIS 



probably unsurpassed by any geologist of bis time, or, as may be better said, never surpassed 

 by any geologist of any time, for no geologist was ever bis superior in tbat faculty, so invaluable 

 in bis bigbly speculative science. His power of analysis, as bere represented, is admirably 

 patient and impartial, and his style of exposition is so clear that the reader, overlooking in 

 the lucid text the laborious search for the facts in a half or wholly desert region and the many 

 tentative and alternative interpretations of preliminary study, is almost tempted to regard his 

 final conclusions as obvious. The earlier pages of this chapter, in which the gradual growth 

 of the conclusions is sketched, may lead to a better understanding of the years of work that 

 they involved. 



The illustrations of the monograph, many of them from expressive drawings by the unrivaled 

 hand of Holmes, add greatly to the value of the text. They bring out sharply the prevalent 

 simplicity and uniformity of the well-carved basin-range slopes above the highest lake level, 

 as the result of normal subaerial erosion at so far advanced a stage of dissection that differences 

 of rock structure are for the most part masked under a well-graded though thin sheet of creeping 

 waste, and they thus show the striking contrast between the slanting and divergent profiles 

 above the Bonneville shore fine and the level and parallel fines of lake beaches on the lower 

 slopes. The map that accompanies the volume profits from the experience of the artist and 

 the lithographer on the corresponding map in Russell's previously issued report on Lake Lahon- 

 tan; that was good, but the Bonneville map is still better in its colors and its expression of rehef. 



The delay in the appearance of the monograph was therefore in some respects advantageous, 

 for it not only permitted the utilization of certain results gained by Russell in his study of 

 Lake Lahontan, the field on which work was begun after that on Bonneville was completed; 

 it also insured the seasoning of all explanatory discussions. But in another respect the delay 

 in the appearance of the Bonneville monograph was disadvantageous. It followed so many 

 excellent predecessors that reviewers, accustomed to a high standard of the survey volumes 

 and already fairly well informed on Bonneville history by earlier partial reports, rarely gave 

 the merited attention to the volume when it finally came out. Thus a writer in Nature, after 

 briefly transcribing an outline of Bonneville history, concludes with not even half a loaf of com- 

 mendation, but with what can only be called a peroratorical sandwich composed of a layer of 

 sincere praise between two slices of plain speaking, the upper slice intimating that the author 

 is sometimes too wordy and the lower slice complimenting especially the artists and the printer: 



The author errs occasionally on the side of prolixity, but he brings together so much valuable information 

 that the book will be indispensable to all who wish to study the history and phenomena of lakes and inland 

 seas. We lay it down with a deep sense of gratitude to him for the loving labour which he has evidently bestowed 

 on this memoir, and will only add that, high as the standard already attained by the American Geological Survey 

 may be, this monograph, especially in the work of the printer and in the number, interest and excellence of the 

 illustrations, more than attains to it. 



Two comments by Gilbert himself may close this chapter. He wrote to a friend in March, 

 1891, shortly after the monograph had appeared: 



I have been interrupted by a reporter. ■ He interviewed me today on Lake Bonneville and came in this 

 evening with his report for me to revise. He says that he has sold it to the N. Y. Tribune and it will probably 

 be telegraphed tonight to appear in tomorrow's (Thursday's) paper. It strikes me as very comic that what I 

 found out years ago should be sent to N. Y. by telegraph instead of mailing the MS. But the reporter never 

 heard of it beforfe, nor have the readers of the Tribune. 



One can imagine the merry chuckle of the writer as he penned those lines. 

 A quarter century later Gilbert wrote to his son in the West: 

 Have been reading my Bonneville report and find I have forgotten a lot of things I knew when I wrote it 



Many readers would say the same thing after the lapse of 25 years, for they also have 

 probably "forgotten a lot of things" that they understood when they read the great monograph, 

 but they will never forget the monograph itself, and in particular those who received a copy 

 of it, with their name written on a flyleaf in Gilbert's own hand, will never forget the pleasure 

 they had in receiving it. Its publication was a great event in the history of American geological 

 science. 



