WASHINGTON ACADEMY OF SCIENCES 79 



sition from 1905 to 1907. On March 14, 1907, President Roosevelt 

 created an Inland Waterways Commission, and at the first meeting of 

 this Commission Doctor McGee was elected vice-chairman and secre- 

 tary, a position he continued to fill until his death. About the same 

 time (March 23, 1907) he was appointed as an expert in soil waters 

 in the Bureau of Soils, United States Department of Agriculture, and 

 in this position he also continued until his death. 



Aside from the honors and responsibilities which came with a busy 

 official life, many additional honors were conferred upon Doctor Mc- 

 Gee. He was one of the principal founders of the Columbia Histori- 

 cal Society; sometime president of the American Anthropological As- 

 sociation, the Anthropological Society of Washington, the National 

 Geographic Society, and the American Association for the Advance- 

 ment of Science (1897). He was the senior speaker in the depart- 

 ment of anthropology at the World's Congress of Arts and Sciences 

 in 1904, and non-resident lecturer on anthropology at the State Uni- 

 versity of Iowa. In 1901, in recognition of his distinguished attain- 

 ments, the degree of LL.D. was conferred on him by Cornell College, 

 Iowa, at which time he presented a comprehensive essay on the 

 " Beginnings of mathematics." 



In 1888 Doctor McGee was married to Anita Newcomb, who, with 

 a son and daughter, survives him. 



In the field of the Pleistocene geology of the upper Mississippi Val- 

 ley, McGee was really a pioneer. At the time he began his studies 

 very little was known of the glacial history of this region, and he did 

 much to establish a knowledge of the succession of invasions and re- 

 cessions of the ice-sheet, and while many of his conclusions have been 

 subject to revision in the light of fuller modern investigation, much 

 of his work remains, and must remain, as a basis on which subsequent 

 knowledge is to be builded. 



McGee's most notable contributions to American geology, are, of 

 course, in the Atlantic Coastal Plain. In this field there must ever be 

 associated the names of four notable students Hilgard, Smith, Dall, 

 and McGee. These men have laid the foundation, however much it 

 has been, or in future will be, modified, upon which all subsequent 

 work must be erected. In the particular phase of the subject which 

 McGee made his own, he was again a pioneer. He saw and appreci- 



