The Geological Work of Prof, foseph Le CoJiie. 215 



or chemical side, we find him adding to our knowledge of 

 metalliferous veins, and he is generally recognized as one of 

 the authorities on this subject. On the physical side, he in- 

 terested himself in the carrying power of water and in the 

 exact study of earthquake waves. In palaeontological work 

 his description and discussion of the famous Carson foot- 

 prints, which was actually the first on that subject to be com- 

 pleted, is a truly remarkable piece of investigation. Much of 

 his most important work was in the field of general inorganic 

 geology. Here he contributed largely to the literature on the 

 origin and formation of mountains, the evolution of conti- 

 nental masses, the permanence of continents and ocean ba- 

 sins, movements of the earth's crust and their causes, the 

 great lava flood of the northwest, Mono volcanoes, and the 

 glacial geology of the Sierras. He was also an active worker 

 in historical geology, and some of his latest publications on 

 critical periods in the earth's history and the Sierran (Ozark- 

 ian) epoch open practically new territory for research. 



The work which Professor L,e Conte accomplished in geol- 

 ogy shows throughout a conception of the relations of the 

 various branches of natural science to each other such as has 

 been possessed by but few. To the close of his life he kept 

 himself perfectly informed on all the important work being 

 done in the natural history sciences, and owing to his wide 

 field of vision he was frequently able to determine at a glance 

 the proper relation of things, which others, limited to a nar- 

 row field, could not possibly discern. This is shown very fre- 

 quently in his combination of the good points of several quite 

 different theories bearing on the same subject. Many of his 

 contributions, more especially those on critical periods in the 

 earth's history, show just such a grasp of the whole subject of 

 geological and biological science. In this work he called at- 

 tention, as had never been done before, to the eflfect of com- 

 plex physical changes, such as critical movements and modi- 

 fications of climate on the progress of organic evolution. 



Through all of his contributions to historical geology, there 



