Academy of Sciences] 

 No. 5] 



SCIENTIFIC RELATIONS 



253 



THE NAMING OF GILBERT GULF 



A remarkable sequel to Gilbert's work on the Great Lakes was the later demonstration 

 that for a time after the opening of the St. Lawrence outlet by the retreating ice sheet the valley 

 of that river was still so low that the sea entered it and thus found access to the basin of Lake 

 Ontario, which was therefore temporarily occupied by a salt-water gulf. The gulf was con- 

 verted into a fresh-water lake only after the region of the St. Lawrence Valley was raised above 

 sea level. It was not unnatural that when the temporary existence of the salt-water body was 

 discovered, the proposal should be made to attach Gilbert's name to it, but he did not altogether 

 approve of the idea; he wrote in 1906 to the chief mover in the proposal: 



You have stolen a march on me in the matter of Gilbert gulf. Hitherto I have managed to stave off things 

 of that sort, but I see no way to escape this. I appreciate of course your kindness and the honor, but have the 

 feeling that there is a bad precedent in the use of names of the living for such purposes. 



MARI N E 5TASE 



Hudson - CViamploin Strait 

 Cham plain Sea 

 6,!bert Gulf. 



Fig. 18. — Gilbert Gulf, an arm of the ocean temporarily occupying the basin of Lake Ontario; from 

 report by H. L. Fairchild (p. 251). 



He expressed the same opinion two years later, when it was proposed to add the name of 

 another living worker to another extinct water body: 



I question, as you know, the general policy of using the names of contemporaries. It grades into toadyism — 

 and then you can't be sure until a man is dead that he wont do something to destroy his reputation, scientific or 

 otherwise. 'When you named Gilbert gulf, you doubtless tho't that Gilbert had made some contribution to 

 the pleistocene history of the lake region, but his exposure in . . . had not then appeared. 



He enjoyed this third-personal manner of referring to himself; and had he been of a com- 

 bative disposition he would have enjoyed also making a quarrel out of the "exposure" here 

 referred to ; but he was not combative, and he never quarreled even under provocation. 



