12 PROCEEDINGS OF WASHINGTON MEETING. 



bringing about the present multiplicity of geological surveys and open- 

 ing the avenues to favorable legislation by the states of the Union and 

 by the United States congress. 



Time will not permit me to enter upon a special study of his separate 

 publications, however inviting and profitable it might promise. We can 

 here only sketch some of the grander steps of his life, and bear our tribute 

 to his goodness, his untiring industry, and his single-minded consecration 

 to the truth. As geologists we have to acknowledge ourselves deeply in- 

 debted to him ; for he explored in advance of us some of the deepest and 

 darkest recesses of our science ; he scanned the heavens of all science and 

 all philosophy, and he brought forth new things and classified old facts 

 which before had been chaotic or contradictory. His imagination served 

 him as a scientific guide to unknown realms ; his language clothed his 

 descriptions with beauty and his ideas with definiteness and reasonable- 

 ness. As a rhetorician few have excelled him ; as a popular scientific 

 expositor, and especially as the harmonizer of apparently conflicting 

 truths in science and religion, none have equalled him. He constructed 

 an arch and put in the keystone connecting two independent pillars of 

 truth. He was able to stand and to work on either of these pillars ; and, 

 being so able, he saw that they were designed to sustain the same great 

 superstructure. The pillars are revealed truth and natural truth, and 

 the superstructure is the unison and harmony of all truth. 



My duty would not all be done did I not refer to his relations to this 

 Society, and his agency in effecting its successful organization. He was 

 among the first to see the need of this organization, and cooperated with 

 the preliminary committees. The Society, however, as an actuality, 

 made but little headway until the Cleveland meeting, where he was made 

 the presiding officer ; and by his judicious selection of committees and 

 the drafting of a preliminary constitution the Society was formally 

 organized, and a large number of influential geologists then present 

 signed the preliminary articles. Since then he has been uninterruptedly 

 in the service of the Society. He has attended every meeting of the 

 Council and every meeting of the Society, having presided, in whole or in 

 part, at every meeting of the latter. Our constitution was drawn up by 

 him in the first instance. It is not too much to say that if to any one 

 belongs the title of " Father of the Geological Society of America," it is 

 to Alexander Winchell. The Society, therefore, to-day for the first time 

 draped in mourning, has lost not only its present chief officer but its 

 strongest friend and promoter. 



In conclusion : We cannot now fully realize the loss which the death 

 of such a geologist inflicts on the science of geology in America. He was 



