430 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SHALER 



on the conservation of our natural resources, and the lines of 

 action which he laid down in them have since met with general 

 approval and acceptance, while his reports on the Geology of 

 Roads and on Road-Building Stones have proved of great prac- 

 tical importance. 



Mr. Shaler's earliest work in the field of general literature is 

 to be found in the Atlantic Monthly so early as 1869. He began 

 to contribute to that magazine with a series of five papers upon 

 Earthquakes, which attracted much attention; but as time 

 went on his writings for this magazine became less strictly 

 scientific, and passing from such subjects as a "Summer's Jour- 

 ney of a Naturalist," "The Moon," and "How to Change the 

 American Climate," he came in later papers printed in the mag- 

 azine in the course of the next fifteen years to the discussion 

 of such themes as the "Natural History of Politics," the "Use 

 of Numbers in Society," the "Negro Problem," the "Law of 

 Fashion," and similar topics of wide general interest when 

 passed through the alembic of his vigorous mind. 



These papers in the Atlantic were greatly liked by the readers 

 of the magazine, and highly valued by its editors. One of these, 

 Mr. Howells, writes, " I have been reading the history of your 

 gipsying with greatest pleasure, the whole most charming 

 and instructive." And in the correspondence which ensued 

 between them during the years of Mr. Ho wells 's editorship of 

 the magazine there were numerous expressions of cordial appre- 

 ciation that notably aided in stirring the literary impulse in Mr. 

 Shaler's writing. There are other letters, too, that came to 

 him as the result of these contributions to the Atlantic that 

 were both pleasing and stimulating, among them this from 

 Oliver Wendell Holmes : 



May 16, 1879. 



Dear Professor Shakr: I have never thanked you for your article on 

 " Sleep and Dreams," but I do thank you at last heartily. I have read it with 

 much interest and have been struck with some of its ideas especially with 

 the original suggestion of the possibility of the transmission of concrete 



