MEMOIK OF JOSEPH LE CONTE 49 



"Until I was thirty I could not have said whether my tastes were more in 

 the direction of science or of art or of philosophy. Circumstances turned me 

 mainly in the direction of science, but I could never be a specialist in the 

 narrow sense of the term. My writings and my thoughts, lilie my education, 

 have been in many directions." . . . "Yet some of my heartiest and most 

 valued friends think that my reputation hereafter will be more philosophic 

 than scientific. It may be so, for even my science is not special in the nari'ow 

 sense, but is rather a sort of philosophic science, dealing mainly with larger 

 questions. The domains of science and pliilosophy are not separated by hard 

 and fast lines ; they largely overlap ; and it is in this border land that I love 

 to dwell." 



Any one who may be interested in Le Contc's views on geo])liysical 

 problems will find them cry\stallized in the Elements of Geology, and with 

 fuller presentation in three papers : his presidential address before the 

 American Association for the Advancement of Science, at the Madison 

 meeting, 1893 ;* his address as retiring President of this Society, at its 

 eighth summer meeting, at Buffalo, 1896,^ and in his memoir of Dana.'^ 



Like all students of earth science of his and previous time, his geo- 

 physical philosophy was founded on the conception of a globe cooling 

 from incandescence. If we abandon the hypothesis of an originally liquid 

 globe, as quite certainly we must, much of the Avritings of Le Conte and 

 Dana will have only an historic and academic interest; but a brief state- 

 ment of their views, based on the Laplacian hypothesis, may be of some 

 interest if placed alongside those of Chamberlin, based on the planetesimal 

 hypothesis. 



In his presidential address Le Conte recognized four classes of earth- 

 crust movements, in the following order of greatness : 



"(1) Those greatest, most extensive, and probably primitive movements by 

 which ocean basins and continental masses were first differentiated and after- 

 ward developed to their present condition; (2) Those movements by lateral 

 thrust by which mountain ranges were formed and continued to grow until 

 l)alanced by exterior erosive forces; (3) Certain movements over large areas, 

 but not continuous in one direction, and therefore not indefinitely cumulative 

 like the two preceding, but oscillatory, first in one direction, then in another, 

 now upward and then downward; (4) Movements by gravitative readjustment, 

 determined by transfer of load from one place to another. . . . 



"Of these four kinds and grades of movement the first two are primary and 

 continuous in the same direction, and therefore cumulative, until balanced by 

 leveling agencies. The other two, on the contrary, are not necessarily con- 

 tinuous in the same direction, but oscillatory. They are, moreover, secondary. 



*Proc. Am. Assoc. Adv. Sci.. vol. 42, l.SO."!, pp. 1 '_'" ; .Tour. (JpoI., vol. 1, isn:*.. pp. 

 ^.42-.'57.^. 



»BuII. Oool. Koc .\m., vol. S. ISO?, pp. IK: 12fi. 



•Bull, Gcol, Soc. Am,, vol. 7, ISO,''., p[.. 40.1 474. 



