96 GROVE KARL GILBERT— DAVIS 



American geologists. Even if that chapter has not been fully appreciated by later writers, it 

 not only taught many early readers a most instructive lesson in physical geology but gave 

 them their first introduction to a personality by which their own work was to be profoundly 

 influenced. 



It may perhaps be asked why Gilbert did not himself continue the discussion of the laccolith 

 problem as new examples of such structures were reported in various parts of the United States 

 and elsewhere by observers who appear to have given very scanty attention to his ideas. His 

 indifference may have been due in part to the increasingly petrographic aspect assumed by the 

 problem as others treated it, for petrography does not appear to have attracted him; but it 

 was probably due in larger part to a feeling that, as he had had his say, he preferred to turn his 

 attention to other subjects and therefore left his laccoliths to work out their own destiny. In 

 any case, when he was in England in 1888 and was approached by a young geologist there who 

 was working on some British examples of laccolithic structures and who was anxious to talk them 

 over with the original discoverer of laccoliths, the problem seemed to have lost its interest for 

 him; for "he professed to have been so much occupied with other things since his Henry Moun- 

 tains work that he had forgotten all about it," much to the disappointment of the young inquirer. 

 This recalls his f orgetf ulness about his new interpretation of Adirondack history, as told above. 



