WASHINGTON ACADEMY OF SCIENCES 93 



repeat a little parody on the lines of Scott, which expresses our 

 sentiments : 



Brother rest, thy life work o'er, 



Sleep the sleep that knows not breaking; 



Dream of troubled times no more, 

 Morn of toil nor night of waking. 



From W. C. Mendenhall, of Washington, D. C. 



Doctor W J McGee had mastered and advocated the fundamental 

 principles of Conservation long before the majority of those now 

 most active in the movement had come to appreciate the real mean- 

 ing of the word. He was one of the founders of this movement, was 

 at all times one of the most stimulating thinkers in its councils, and 

 in him Mr. Pinchot found one of his most loyal supporters and 

 friends. Doctor McGee was the personification of strength and 

 steadfastness in the pioneer period of Conservation, when the mean- 

 ing of the word was unknown to the multitude, and when the mere 

 suggestion that our natural resources are not inexhaustible, but 

 may be depleted to the vanishing point by wasteful use, was regarded 

 as a wild heresy. During the sessions of the National Conserva- 

 tion Congress he was its accepted authority on problems involving 

 that most widespread and universally distributed of our natural 

 resources water. He has dealt with this resource from the points of 

 view of transportation, of irrigation, and of power, and from the 

 standpoint of biology, in which it is recognized as fundamental in all 

 life. 



Doctor McGee's mind was of the type of the intellectual pioneer, 

 intensely individual and original. He was masterful in the alignment 

 of facts and stimulating in the recognition and boldness of his ex- 

 pression of the generalizations and far-reaching conclusions to which 

 his marshalled facts pointed. Like most men of brilliant imagina- 

 tion, he was at times impatient of the slow processes of research, or 

 let us say rather that his impatience was with that timidity in reaching 

 conclusions so often displayed by those engaged in research, rather 

 than with the process itself. He believed that the scientist's practi- 

 cal rule of life should be the acceptance, as a basis of action, of the 



