64 McGEE MEMORIAL MEETING 



and even in later life, notwithstanding his apparent robustness, he 

 was not so strong physically as was generally supposed. 



Me Gee attended irregularly a county district school, of the kind 

 common to sparsely settled communities, until he was about fourteen 

 years of age, from which time his education was almost entirely the 

 result of intense individual effort, in which he was urged and stimu- 

 lated by his mother, an excellently well-informed woman, who was 

 anxious that her children should be well educated. The last one 

 apparently to give him formal instruction, in 1867-68, was an elder 

 brother. The boy proved to be an apt pupil, acquiring knowledge 

 with wonderful ease and retaining it in what later developed into a 

 really remarkable memory. These home studies were continued 

 through the years 1867 to 1874, and included Latin, German, and 

 higher mathematics. He also read law, and to a slight extent en- 

 gaged in justice-court practice. His self-acquired knowledge of 

 mathematics, which included astronomy and surveying, combined 

 with field instruction by a maternal uncle, made him an excellent 

 surveyor, and his services in this capacity were not only much in de- 

 mand in the neighborhood, but increased his powers of observation 

 during the outdoor work that ultimately led him into the paths of 

 geology and anthropology. Meanwhile, when about twenty years of 

 age, he worked at the forge and became engaged in the manufacture 

 and sale of agricultural implements. In conjunction with an elder 

 brother and a cousin, he invented and patented, June 9, 1874, an im- 

 proved adjustable cultivator, but the device was not a commercial 

 success. 



As is well known, McGee's first serious scientific work was in the 

 field of geology. In 1878 he was enrolled as a member of the Ameri- 

 can Association for the Advancement of Science in affiliation with 

 its section of geology, and in the same year published his first paper 

 on a geological topic. From 1877 to 1881 he prosecuted, as a private 

 enterprise, a topographic and geological survey of an area in north- 

 eastern Iowa covering about 12,000 square miles. 



It was evidently during this field work that McGee's interest in 

 anthropological research was first aroused. In 1878 appeared his 

 first paper on an anthropological subject "On the Artificial Mounds 

 of Northeastern Iowa, and the Evidence of the Employment of a 



