CHAPTER VII 

 FIRST WINTERS IN WASHINGTON 



EXTENSION OF SCIENTIFIC ACQUAINTANCE 



Although Washington in the early seventies was by no means the scientific center that 

 it has since become, it was already the residence of a good number of distinguished men of 

 science holding Government positions, and in this respect it must have presented an enlivening 

 contrast to the other cities that Gilbert knew; for Rochester and Columbus were at that time 

 of small size and of somewhat rural quality, and even in metropolitan New York, science was 

 then more hidden under trade and traffic than it was submerged beneath politics in the National 

 Capital. Hence, after the young geologist, returning late in Ids twenty-eighth year from his 

 first season of field work in the West, arrived in Washington near the end of January, 1872, 

 and reported at Lieutenant Wheeler's office, 1813 F Street NW., he soon found opportunity 

 for forming acquaintance with his scientific elders, among them Baird, Newcomb, Powell, 

 Hayden, Meek, Hilgard, Harkness, Abbe, Dutton, and others whom he met and learned to know 

 at meetings of the Philosophical Society, organized only a year before, and elsewhere. Judging 

 by what followed in after years, it is not to be doubted that he made a good impression on all 

 his seniors. Indeed, brief entries in his diaries record that on May 18, 1872, Gilbert himself 

 spoke at one of these meetings on " Nev. and A. T." (Nevada and Arizona Territory); a year 

 later he addressed the same society on "Weighing the Earth by Col. Canon," and in February, 

 1874, he harked back to 1868 and gave the " G. & G. Soc," apparently a combination of 

 geologists and geographers later organized separately, an account of "the Cohoes Cedars time 

 data," as already noted. The entries in his diaries for this year and the next also indicate 

 that a good number of evening calls were made on his new friends; and one of the earliest of 

 them, Baird, then Secretary of the Smithsonian, invited him to establish his office in that 

 institution, an invitation to which Wheeler naturally enough objected. Many days in the 

 first months of 1872 are summarized with the single word, "Boning," at the top of the page, 

 which presumably means "Working on field notes," for the manuscript of a preliminary report 

 was completed March 17. In February the study of German was taken up, a subject in which 

 progress does not appear to have been great; it was taken up again 12 years later, with no 

 greater success. 



But lest it may be thought that the young man was altogether given over to the more serious 

 aspects of life, some lines entered in his diary under date of March 28, 1872, and therefore after 

 two months of elevating scientific associations, may be here quoted: "Afternoon Marvine and 

 I threw ball near the market until stopped by the police. Evening heard Nillson in Faust 

 from negroes' heaven. Music and acting was great." Then comes a note, " Steamed oysters are 

 a trifle better than coagulated clams," which might rival the famous mystery of "chops and 

 tomato sauce," were it not followed by an entry in the petty cash account habitually kept near 

 the bottom of each daily record: "Std. oys. . . . 80," from which it appears that the evening 

 must have been closed with a post-operatic revel. Evidently, geology was not all absorbing. 

 Indeed in the following winter Gilbert and Howell took dancing lessons with a view to cultivating 

 the social amenities to which neither of them seem previously to have paid much attention. 

 Truly, that a hardy devotee of science' in the summer should in the winter not only carry his 

 disorderly conduct so far that it had to be restrained by the public guardians of good order, 

 but should even attempt to "trip the light fantastic toe" as a means of ingratiating himself 

 in gentle company, is not what a reader of his sententious geological reports feels that he has 

 a right to expect ! However, Gilbert's alma mater does not appear to have been disturbed 

 either by hearing of or by foreseeing these pranks and dissipations, for in the summer of 1872 

 the University of Rochester awarded him the degree of A. M. 



After the season of 1873 in the West, scientific comradeship had a fine illustration. Gilbert, 

 Howell, and Henshaw returned from Salt Lake City to Washington by train together and 

 decided on the way to establish winter quarters in common near their chief's office; and as 



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