NATIONAL ACADEMY BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIRS VOL. VIII 



Survey was fixed by congressional enactment ; but it is dropped 

 from the "Geologic Atlas of the United States" and from the 

 "geologic" and "paleontologic" branches of the Survey, al- 

 though retained in the "physical" and "chemical" branches. We 

 have already seen that he liked to cast geographical phrases 

 in striking forms ; other examples are : "The lightnings that 

 flash athwart the sky," "the coal mine is but a pot of 

 pickled sunbeams," and "then ... the egg of poetry is 

 laid." He was particularly fond of reiterating a standard 

 phrase-form, in which changes are rung on a variable element : 

 "It is a wonder that the blows of the hammer are transmuted 

 into heat. It is a wonder that the motions of the ether can be 

 transmuted into the rainbow. It is a wonder, that the egg can 

 be transmuted into the eagle. It is a wonder that the babe can 

 be transmuted into the sage. It is a wonder that an objective 

 blow can be transmuted into a subjective pain. It is a wonder 

 that the vibrations of the air may be transmuted into melody 

 It is a wonder that the printed page may be transmuted into 

 visions of the beautiful" (Human Evolution, Trans. Anthrop. 

 Soc. Wash., II, p. 208). Reiteration of this kind can hardly 

 have been selected as a thought-saving device, such as makes 

 for the evolution of language ; nor would it appear to possess 

 seductive value whereby a reader's attention is enthralled in- 

 stead of fatigued ; it must be regarded as one of those manner- 

 isms by which originality sometimes overreaches itself, for it 

 turns attention to the phrasing rather than to the content of 

 the phrasing. 



VIEWS ON EVOLUTION. 



Powell was inevitably an evolutionist, fully convinced of the 

 gradual development of the, existing order of things from an 

 earlier order. He maintained, however, that organic evolu- 

 tion, as ordinarily understood, should be limited to progress in 

 bodily organs and functions, and that human evolution is 

 progress in culture, in which such phrases as the "struggle for 

 existence" and "the survival of the fittest" have no application. 

 Yet to natural evolutionary processes he ascribed the develop- 

 ment of all mental qualities, with their marvelous progress 

 from the lower to the higher, among which "the wonder of 



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