5-t JOTRNAL OF I"(^Ri:STin' 



liography. It may be that the egregious slip embodied in the state- 

 ment which is fathered upon Mr. Pinchot in the footnote on page ii, 

 that "the name (conservation) was devised in the United States in 

 1898," is one for which Professor Ely is not primarily responsible; but 

 careful proof-reading by any one really familiar with the history of 

 conservation should have caught up the error. More significant, how- 

 ever, because suggestive not merely of superficial knowledge, but also 

 of deliberate unwillingness to give credit where credit is richly due, is 

 the reference to the work and writings of Dr. W J McGee. 



Adequate statement of Dr. McGee's contributions to the conserva- 

 tion movement would necessitate nothing short o^ a full history of that 

 movement. In a sense, his share in it was the crowning accomplish- 

 ment of his full, varied, and immensely productive life. A record of 

 that life, from the standpoint of its scientific and public- welfare activi- 

 ties, is embodied in a recent publication of the Washington Academy 

 of Sciences, entitled "The McGee Memorial Meeting." This meeting 

 was held in Washington, at the Carnegie Institution, December 5, 1913. 

 The bibliographies incorporated in the published record of this meet- 

 ing fill nine pages with titles of Dr. McGee's writings. An authorita- 

 tive statement from the man better able than any other living being to 

 appraise the importance of Dr. McGee's work for conservation was 

 made at this meeting by Mr. Pinchot. In this statement he said : 



"Without McGee the conservation movement would either have been de- 

 layed for years or would have been halting and feeble at birth. His con- 

 tribution to it has been too little known. . . . Many and many a passage 

 in Roosevelt's p«residential messages and in other State papers dealing with 

 conservation had its first beginning in McGee's penetrating intelligence. 

 . . . . So far as such a thing can ever be said of any one man in a move- 

 ment so extensive, McGee was the scientific brains of the conservation 

 movement all through its early critical stages. The distinguishing character 

 of that movement from the first was its joint consideration of all the natural 

 resources together as the working capital of humanity. . . . The wide 

 and balanced knowledge of this continent which was so striking a peculiarity 

 of McGee's intellectual equipment naturally fitted him for this work in a 

 very high degree. . . . McGee at least as much as any other one man 

 was responsible for formulating the plan for the Roosevelt Inland Water- 

 ways Commission, which for the first time in any national project considered 

 as a single problem the wise handling of all the natural resources of the 

 continent. As secretary of this commission and as unofficial adviser and 

 guide of all of the inland waterways associations. McGee played a part in 

 the development of our rivers the importance of which it would be difficult 

 to overstate. Of all his services to the conservation movement, this was the 



