106 McGEE MEMORIAL MEETING 



of purpose, proving himself always a sympathetic critic and counsellor. 

 His great devotion to the public interest, which was evident in all his 

 actions and showed itself in all his plans, needs no especial comment 

 from me. In his duty to the public, he always served to the best of 

 his ability. I deem it a great privilege to have been counted among 

 his friends, and my good fortune to have been his colleague in related 

 lines of scientific inquiry. 



From Doctor Eugene A. Smith, State Geologist of Alabama: 



Doctor McGee visited Alabama and was my guest many times 

 when our Coastal Plain work was in progress. That was during the 

 " eighties." I found his suggestions of the very greatest value, and 

 was most thoroughly in sympathy with him in his contention that the 

 lithologic and stratigraphic characters of our Coastal Plain formation 

 were entitled to as much weight as the Paleontological, and that a 

 geological map should show all these characters and subdivisions 

 wherever they could be consistently followed out. In other words, a 

 geological map should not necessarily, and in many cases not even 

 desirably, be a paleontological map. 



The Atlantic Coast equivalent of Hilgard's Orange Sand was named 

 by McGee Appomatox, but since by the rulings of the United States 

 Geological Survey the use of a descriptive name for a formation was 

 forbidden, he agreed to leave to Doctor Hilgard, who had years before 

 described this formation the selection of a name which would pass 

 muster at headquarters. After a conference between Hilgard, Le- 

 Conte, Loughridge, and himself at Berkeley, the name Lafayette was 

 selected, the type locality being in Lafayette County, Mississippi, in 

 the eastern part of which the most characteristic occurrences of the 

 Red Sand, pebbles and other beds, are to be found overlying the 

 Eocene everywhere, capping the hill tops, and unconforrnable to the 

 Eocene in every case. 



At the Lunch Club of the younger members of the United States 

 Geological Survey McGee was the subject of a good deal of good-nat- 

 ured chaffing for having surrendered his name Appomattox, the favor- 

 ite quotation being "We've met the enemy and we are their'n." 

 Everybody will agree that Doctor Hilgard was entitled to considera- 



