94 Obituary — Grove Karl Gilbert. 



I was unable to see the collected edition of the Tavoy lectures, 

 published at Rangoon, until October, when Mr. J". F. L. Vogel, of 

 High Speed Steel Alloys, Ltd., of Widnes, was kind enough to lend 

 me the copy belonging to his company. I need hardly say that 

 I should have been only too pleased to quote the results of more 

 recent work had such been available at the time. Much of the 

 difficulty of obtaining information no doubt arose from the prevalence 

 of war conditions and the slowness of communications, but it is 

 much to be regretted that geologists who have worked in Tavoy 

 have almost always elected to publish their results in more or less 

 obscure and inaccessible forms; copies of such publications are not 

 always to be found in the principal scientific libraries. May 

 I venture to suggest that the pages of the Geological Magazine are 

 readily open to receive either original contributions or abstracts of 

 other publications on matters of such high scientific interest and 

 practical importance? 



R. H. RaSTALL. 



OBITUAET. 



GROVE KARL GILBERT. 

 Born 1843. Died 1918. 



Grove Karl Gilbert was born at Rochester, N.Y., on May 6, 1843. 

 He received his early education in the same city and graduated in 

 the classical course at the University there. After a year spent in 

 teaching at Jackson, Michigan, he returned to Rochester, where he 

 was employed for five years as assistant to a well-known dealer in 

 scientific materials. In 1868 he became a voluntary assistant on the 

 Ohio Geological Survey, but his real career may be said to have 

 commenced in 1871, when he joined the Survey of Utah, Nevada, 

 and Arizona; here Gilbert began the field-studies which led to the 

 great work of his life, the investigation of the dependence of 

 physiographic form on geological structure. The earlier publications 

 of this Survey contained his exposition of the fault-block structure 

 of the Basin Ranges and his masterly monograph on Lake Bonneville. 

 In 1876 he explored the Henry Mountains and put forth the now 

 accepted explanation of the peculiar forms of igneous intrusions, 

 introducing the well-known term "laccolith". The report on the 

 Henry Mountains also contains a chapter on land-sculpture, which 

 is a classic of geological literature and the foundation of modern 

 theories of denudation and the development of river- systems. 



From 1884 to 1888 Gilbert was employed in the Appalachian 

 region and occupied high administrative posts on the United States 

 Geological Survey. Later he studied many other parts of the United 

 States, including the Great Lakes and Alaska. He published a 

 volume on the history of the Niagara River and a report on Earth- 

 movements in the Great Lakes Region. His observations in Alaska 

 in 1899 led to his introduction of the now universally used term 

 "hanging valleys" with an explanation of their origin. 



The physiographic work of G. K. Gilbert must always remain one 

 of the outstanding features of physical geology in the nineteenth 



