EULOGIUM OF ALEXANDER WINCHELL. 57 



all of the problems, structural and historical, he has treated lucidly and 

 soberly and to the enrichment of our literature. 



There is, however, another division of our science in which Dr. Win- 

 chell's untimely death will be most severely felt. Who among us is 

 prepared to treat with equal scope and breadth, with equal mastery of all 

 that has? been done by others in this abstruse field, the large questions of 

 cosmical geology — questions which, though requiring for their discussion 

 the methods and resources of other divisions of science, must always find 

 their most natural reference within our own domain ? 



In the death of Dr. Winch ell we lose an accomplished and eloquent 

 teacher of geology, whose oral instruction has inspired many thousands 

 of educated men, in all professions and callings, with deep interest in 

 and profound respect for this division of knowledge, while his text-books 

 have marked a new departure in the elementary teaching of geology, to 

 the great and lasting advantage of the science. 



To all this must be added his remarkable ability and success as a 

 popular expounder of the doctrines of geology. No man since the days 

 of the elder Agassiz has done so much to familiarize the more intelligent 

 portion of our American communities with the great deductions and the 

 established results of our science. 



Another service, and one of incalculable value, though confessedly in- 

 capable of precise definition, Dr. Winchell rendered to us all in this line 

 of public exposition. Unquestionably the most important contribution 

 of our day to geological science is the doctrine of organic evolution, as 

 presented by Darwin and his successors. But the first enunciation of 

 this doctrine naturally awakened distrust and even bitter hostility 

 among a large class of our people, because of its apparent incompati- 

 bility with some of their most fundamental convictions and beliefs. To 

 disregard the sincere apprehensions of this great class, comprising as it 

 does so much of the moral and intellectual force of the body politic, 

 would be heartless. To mock at its fears, ill founded though they were, 

 would be worse. What worthier service to science and the community 

 than to disarm this hostility by showing that the evolutionary philos- 

 ophy, so far from degrading and dishonoring man, makes him in a 

 peculiar sense the head and crown of the creation? We are indebted to 

 Alexander Winchell more than to any other representative of science 

 for the rapidly growing liberality and enlargement of thought of the 

 more serious-minded portions of the community in regard to these ques- 

 tions. From the lecture platform, in magazine and review and news- 

 paper, as well as in more formal and permanent fashion. Dr. Winchell 

 stated and defended with marked ability, courage, and persuasive power 



VIII— Bum.. Geol. Soc. Am., Vol. :i, l.v.ii. 



