578 REPORT OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1904. 



into one of the most prolific and voluminous writers. The Geological 

 History of Plants, The Air Breathers of the Coal Period, The Cana- 

 dian Ice Age, The Dawn of Life, Story of the Earth and Man, Fossil 

 Men and their Modern Representatives, The Meeting Place of Geology 

 and History, and Modern Science in Bible Lands are among the best 

 known of his writings, in addition to the work above reviewed. In 

 educational matters he was always prominent, and the present stand- 

 ing of McGill University is largely due to his industry and ability as 

 an administrator. He is represented by his biographer as a man of 

 quiet geniality, gentle and courtly in manner, but, as may be readily 

 surmised from his record in the Eozoon controversy, decided in opin- 

 ion and firm in action. Like Alexander Winchell he took a prominent 

 part in overcoming the popular prejudice concerning the supposed 

 antagonism between religion and the sciences, particularly geology. 

 An advanced and liberal thinker, he was, nevertheless, not an evolu- 

 tionist in the ordinary acceptance of the term. He believed that the 

 introduction of new species of animals and plants had been a continu- 

 ous process, not necessarily in the sense of deviation of one species 

 from another, but in the higher sense of the continued operation of 

 the cause or causes which introduced life at first. The history of a 

 life, he argued, presents a progress from the lower to the higher, from 

 the simpler to the more complex, and from the more generalized to 

 the more specialized. In this progress new types are introduced and 

 take the place of the older ones, which sink to a relatively subordinate 

 place and become thus degraded. To him paleontology furnished no 

 direct evidence as to the actual transformation of one species into 

 another or as to the actual circumstances of creation of a species; but 

 the drift of its testimony to him showed that species come in per saltum 

 rather than by any slow and gradual process. 



In 1879 there was published, as already noted (p. 515), part one of 

 Whitney's Auriferous Gravels of the Sierra Nevada of California, 

 and in 1880 part two of the same work, the combined papers comprising 

 a volume of 569 pages, in which the distribution, 

 a^av"is y i879 8o erous origin, and characteristics of the auriferous gravels 

 of the Sierras are fully discussed and much infor- 

 mation given regarding their method of mining and economic value. 



Discussing the origin of the conglomerates and the prevailing 

 theories regarding their marine origin, he wrote: 



Again, these detrital deposits are not distributed over the flanks of the Sierra in 

 any such way as they would have been if they were the result of the action of the 

 sea. On the contrary, there is every reason to believe that they consist of materials 

 which have been brought down from the mountain heights above and deposited in 

 preexisting valleys; sometimes very narrow accumulations, simply beds of ancient 

 rivers, and at other times in wide lakedike expanses of former water courses. 



Subsequent work has apparently fully confirmed Whitney's view, 



