48 McGEE MEMORIAL MEETING 



From Senator Theodore E. Burton, of Ohio : 



I knew Doctor McGee intimately and would have considered it a 

 privilege to testify in person to my appreciation of his life and work. 

 All his scientific attainments, which were especially marked in anthro- 

 pology, geology, and hydrology, were utilized for practical ends and 

 the benefit of the country and the race. A man of remarkable ver- 

 satility and of big ideas, he dwelt not in the past but in the future. 

 He drew his lessons from history, but he made them an inspiration 

 for coming generations. He was above and beyond all a disciple of 

 practical conservation, a believer that water was as much an asset 

 of the nation as the land or as the minerals beneath the land. 



It is frequently said that the influence of men is ephemeral, and 

 that when they are laid away they are soon forgotten. This is doubt- 

 less true of the majority of us, but the name and work of such men as 

 Doctor McGee will endure as long as men are interested in science 

 and as long as people admire the work of genius. 



From Doctor Frank R. Cameron, United States Bureau of Soils: 



I first met Doctor McGee nearly twenty years ago, shortly after 

 my arrival in Washington. I was not especially drawn to him then 

 nor for some years later, although I recognized his great personal 

 force. I greatly admired his devotion to the late Major Powell, but 

 first became really interested in him on his return to Washington af- 

 ter the inauguration of the " Conservation" movement. We became 

 close and even intimate friends. 



My strongest recollection of Doctor McGee is of his intense devo- 

 tion to the public interest and keen sense of personal responsibility 

 thereto. Never, I think, at least during the last years of his life 

 when I was privileged to know him well, did he commit himself to 

 even a trivial act without more or less carefully considering its im- 

 port on the public welfare. Certainly he never failed of this consid- 

 eration in his conduct of his official work, nor was any one with whom 

 he was brought into contact allowed to ignore or forget that the pub- 

 lic interest must be kept paramount. 



Some months after the surgical operation he underwent in the 

 summer of 1910 he asked me to come to his office. Although at the 



