GEORGE HUNTINGTON WILLIAMS. 765 



of his fellow countrymen in two reviews. Subsequently he 

 received from Professor Lehmann a suite of specimens demon- 

 strating the correctness of his conclusions, and by this means he 

 became fully alive to the importance of similar methods of 

 investigation for unraveling the complications of metamorphic 

 rocks. This he expressed in his report on the Menominee- 

 Marquette region in the following words: "The recent multi- 

 plicity of refined methods for the investigation of crystalline 

 rocks, has opened an almost new field of geological inquiry. 

 The difficult and obscure problems here presented may now be 

 attacked by truly scientific methods. The prophecies which 

 Hermann Vogelsang made in 1867 for the new departure in 

 geology have been more than realized within the last twenty 

 years. The almost new science of petrography may be said to 

 have proved itself capable of rendering, in the study of the 

 crystalline rocks, a service equal to that which palaeontology has 

 already given in the deciphering and correlating of the fossilifer- 

 ous strata." 1 



Later his convictions as to the mission of petrology and the 

 part it is to play in the advancement of geological science found 

 expression in his address before the Worcester Polytechnic Insti- 

 tute, in which he said : "The recent development in the science 

 of the earth consists of the return to the work begun by its ear- 

 liest pioneers. The old petrographers were right. If we would 

 know the life history of our planet, we must learn the origin, 

 structural relations, and composition of our rocks. We must dis- 

 cover the forces — chemical and physical — which work in and 

 upon them, and we must see how they work." Then catching 

 nspiration from that eloquent advocate of the universality of life 

 in matter, Professor John W. Judd, he adds: "It is a question 

 how far the popularly received distinction between dead and liv- 

 ing matter can be made amenable to strict definition as long as 

 we know so little of what the so-called 'life force' is. As far as 

 we can judge of the phenomena presented by the organic and 

 mineral worlds, they differ rather in degree than in kind. . . . . 



1 Bulletin 62, U. S. Geological Survey, p. 34. 



