78 McGEE MEMORIAL MEETING 



glaciation and its phenomena, and began independent observations 

 which soon brought him into communication and contact with other 

 workers in this field. The fact that he joined the American Associa- 

 tion for the Advancement of Science in 1878 (twenty-seventh meet- 

 ing, St. Louis, August, 1878), enrolling himself in the section of geol- 

 ogy, shows that his interest was even then crystallizing along these 

 lines. So far as learned, his first scientific paper, "On the relative 

 position of the forest bed and associated formations in northeastern 

 Iowa," was published in 1878, and was the forerunner of many of 

 like import. Between the years 1877 and 1881 he prosecuted, as a 

 private enterprise, a topographic and geologic survey of some 12,000 

 square miles of territory in northeastern Iowa, though the full results 

 were not published until 1891. 



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

 building stones of Iowa, prepared for the Tenth Census of 1880, 

 though not published until four years later. This, but more espe- 

 cially his careful work on the multifarious phenomena of glaciation 

 in the upper Mississippi Valley, had attracted wide attention, and 

 in July, 1883, he was called to the U. S. Geological Survey, then under 

 the directorship of Major J. W. Powell. In a very short time he was 

 placed in charge of the division of Atlantic Coastal Plain geology. 

 Although then but thirty years of age, he came, not as a mere tyro 

 or dabbler in geology, as might be presumed from his previous isola- 

 tion, but with an astonishing breadth of view and maturity of judg- 

 ment, and within the next ten years he erected a foundation which 

 must always be considered by any who would study the geology of 

 the Coastal Plain. This decade 1883-1894 covers the period of 

 his most intensive constructive geological activities. He resigned 

 from the Geological Survey on June 30, 1893, to assume on the fol- 

 lowing day the position of ethnologist in the Bureau of American 

 Ethnology, to which department he had accompanied Major Powell. 

 One year later he became ethnologist in charge of the Bureau, and 

 continued in this position until July 31, 1903, when he resigned to as- 

 sume charge of the Department of Anthropology of the St. Louis 

 Exposition, where he brought together an unprecedented assemblage 

 of the world's peoples. At the close of the exposition he became the 

 first director of the St. Louis Public Museum, continuing in this po- 



