WASHINGTON ACADEMY OF SCIENCES 105 



From Doctor Oswald Schreiner, of the United States Bureau of 

 Soils: 



I knew Doctor Me Gee only during the last few years of his life so 

 rich in experience and attainments. Recognizing his great personal 

 force and his devotion to lofty ideals, to broad conceptions of science, 

 and to the men who like himself labored for these things, it became a 

 matter of regret to me that I had not had the inspiration of his 

 guidance earlier. His charming personality, his truly wonderful 

 power of expressing himself, and his great ability to see the inter- 

 relationship of things, had the effect of inspiring me with a renewed 

 energy to labor on the difficult problems we were discussing, although 

 I could not always subscribe to the deductions made. Though in- 

 terested to some degree in the controlled results of modern laboratory 

 science, he concerned himself much more with the broad philosophies 

 based on observations in nature's own laboratory. He was a pro- 

 found student of the great out-of-doors; he was a close observer, and 

 had a retentive memory for even the minutest details of observations 

 made as far back as his boyhood days in Iowa, as I had occasion to 

 discover when we were discussing the occurrence and origin of the 

 black coal-like fragments of soil organic matter. His ideas on soils I 

 found extremely suggestive and helpful, though in the cold light of 

 experimental science they seemed sometimes to go beyond the demon- 

 strated facts. 



As the science of chemistry is by nature a laboratory study, he 

 seemed less in sympathy with chemical philosophy than with those of 

 other sciences. Atomistic concepts of matter seemed to appeal little 

 to him. From such discussions he would wander to the broader con- 

 ceptions of the structure of the universe, and thus give a cosmic in- 

 terpretation to all concepts of matter. His cosmic concepts inter- 

 ested me, almost charmed me by their boldness, yet I must frankly 

 confess that at times his philosophy was not very clear to me. To 

 inanimate matter he appeared almost to attribute functions and even 

 motives of action. Although admittedly an agnostic, yet he seemed 

 at times on the very verge of pantheism. 



Doctor McGee was a constant source of inspiration and he gave 

 freely of his vast learning to all who came to him with earnestness 



