114 McGEE MEMORIAL MEETING 



in 1883. He was placed in charge of the Potomac Division of geology 

 in 1885 and the scope of the territory over which he exercised super- 

 vision was gradually extended until in 1890 it comprised most of the 

 Atlantic Coastal Plain and the part of the Gulf Coastal Plain east of 

 Mississippi River. His study of geologic problems was commensurate 

 with the limits of the region, and in his publications he devotes atten- 

 tion to it throughout its extent from Cape Cod to the Mexican border 

 and from the Gulf of Mexico to southern Illinois. 



McGee is one of a series of investigators in this region, and should 

 be considered in relation to his predecessors, to his contemporaries, 

 and to his successors. Among his predecessors were H. D. Rogers 

 and Cook in New Jersey, Tyson in Maryland, W. B. Rogers in Vir- 

 ginia, Emmons and Kerr in North Carolina, Tuomey in South Caro- 

 lina and Alabama, Hilgard in Mississippi, Safford in Tennessee, 

 Loughridge in Kentucky, and Hilgard and Hopkins in Louisiana. 

 Besides those mentioned, other geologists, prominent among whom 

 were Lyell and Conrad, had made notable contribution to the geology 

 of the Coastal Plain. Among his contemporaries were Salisbury in 

 New Jersey; Fontaine, Ward, Darton, Kerr, and J. A. Holmes in the 

 Middle Atlantic slope; Smith, Dall, L. C. Johnson, and Langdon, in 

 the eastern Gulf Coastal Plain; Hill and Call in Arkansas; and Hill 

 and Penrose in Texas. The contemporaneous investigations by mem- 

 bers of the United States Geological Survey, from Maryland south- 

 ward to the Mississippi River, except those by the paleontologists Fon- 

 taine, Ward, and Dall, were under his supervision. Excellent as was 

 the work of many of these geologists, among whose names are those 

 of men of great distinction, its scope was mostly areally limited, 

 and the attempt had scarcely been made to correlate geologic phe- 

 nomena throughout the vast extent of the entire region. 



There was in all of McGee's work on the Coastal Plain a dominant 

 motive to which a large part of his influence on succeeding investi- 

 gations is to be attributed. This motive was to discover the genetic 

 principles underlying the geologic phenomena to which he paid 

 attention, and to base his classifications on homogeny. 



He gave particular consideration to physiology, stratigraphy, and 

 physical geologic history. In treating the physiography, besides de- 

 scribing the relief of the land surface, the drainage courses, and the 



