148 GROVE KARL GILBERT— DAVIS 



tunity for a crucial observation. If the crust of the earth floats upon a fluid nucleus, the evaporation of Lake 

 Bonneville, by lifting from it a great weight, must have produced an uplift of determinate form. If the whole 

 earth is solid, such a result could not have been wrought. The decisive phenomena are known to exist, and to be 

 accessible, but they are scattered over a broad desert, and they can be gathered in only at the cost of much 

 money and great labor. 



There is outlined the problem to which Gilbert's genius would have been directed, had he 

 been free to follow Ids manifest inclination, instead of being loyally bound to support his director, 

 Powell, in the administration of a great national scientific organization. And at the beginning of 

 the paragraph from which the last quoted lines are taken stands the touching phrase in which he, 

 as it were, takes leave of his personal ambition : " It is hardly necessary," he said to his audience, 

 " to assure you that my personal regret in abandoning this research at its present stage is very 

 great." That phrase was an epitaph. 



