WASHINGTON ACADEMY OF SCIENCES 65 



Unit of Measurement in their Erection" an immediate outcome of 

 his geological studies and surveys in the preceding year. At the 

 meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science 

 at St. Louis in 1878 he presented a paper "On an Anatomical Peculi- 

 arity by which Crania of the Mound Builders may be Distinguished 

 from those of Modern Indians," in which, as in the case of his earlier 

 paper, were presented views that, while characteristic of the period, 

 are untenable in the light of present knowledge, but serve to illustrate 

 the great advance made in the elucidation of archaeological prob- 

 lems during subsequent years. 



McGee's first work under Federal auspices was a report on the 

 building stones of Iowa, prepared for the Tenth Census (1880), pub- 

 lished in 1884. This, but more especially his careful work on the 

 multifarious phenomena of glaciation in the upper Mississippi valley, 

 had attracted wide attention, and in July, 1883, when thirty years of 

 age, he was called to the United States Geological Survey by its di- 

 rector, Major J. W. Powell, where for ten years he served as a geolo- 

 gist and performed important scientific work. On June 30, 1893, 

 Me Gee resigned from the Geological Survey to assume on the follow- 

 ing day the active charge of the Bureau of American Ethnology, 

 under the directorship of Major Powell, with the title of ethnologist, 

 and a year later his designation was changed to ethnologist-in-charge. 

 During his service with this Bureau, which extended through a de- 

 cade, he continued active scientific work whenever the pressure of 

 the administrative duties of a Government office permitted. His 

 most noteworthy undertaking in this direction, which resulted in his 

 most important contribution to anthropology, was a study, during 

 two seasons, of the Seri Indians of Tiburon Island in the Gulf of 

 California and of the adjacent coast of Sonora, in 1894 and 1895. 

 With a small party he conducted the only scientific expedition to 

 Tiburon Island that had ever been attempted, and prepared a topo- 

 graphic map of the island home of the Seri; but as the Indians fled on 

 the approach of the party, McGee did not come in contact with them 

 on the island, depending for his information on a band employed by 

 a Mexican ranchman near the Sonora coast. The results of these 

 studies formed one of the accompanying papers of the Eighteenth 

 Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology. Subsequently 



