Mabch 5, 1915] 



SCIENCE 



353 



interests, more intelligent sympathy and 

 active support would be accorded to those 

 who are endeavoring to extend the bounds 

 of knowledge. 



In the present world-crisis we are op- 

 pressed by the feeling that the old concep- 

 tions of truth have failed us, but our 

 despondency is lessened by the realization 

 of the progress which the efforts of inves- 

 tigators must bring when they are heartily 

 approved, sustained and strengthened by 

 universities fully awakened to the necessity 

 for intellectual leadership in the develop- 

 ment of the newer civilization. 



Stewart Paton 



JOKN MUIB 



On the day before Christmas John Muir, 

 geologist, explorer, naturalist, author, joined 

 the great majority. Though seventy-six years 

 old there had been no apparent decay of his 

 remarkable faculties. Nor was there any 

 painful waiting for the end. Death found 

 him almost in the midst of his literary activ- 

 ities, which he had laid aside for a brief inter- 

 val in order that he might spend the Christ- 

 mas holidays with one of his daughters in 

 southern California. On the 2Yth of Decem- 

 ber a large concourse of friends gathered from 

 near and far at his home near Martinez, Cali- 

 fornia, to hear the last rites spoken over his 

 remains. He was buried, beside his wife, under 

 trees planted by his own hand, in the beautiful 

 family burial-ground among the Alhambra 

 hills. 



John Muir was born at Dunbar, Scotland, 

 April 21, 1838. He was the third in a family 

 of seven children. His early education was 

 received at the grammar school in Dunbar. 

 When he was eleven years old his father 

 emigrated with his family to the United States. 

 They settled on a farm near Portage, Wis- 

 consin. There he indulged to the full his fond- 

 ness for the life of the wilderness. His book 

 entitled " The Story of My Boyhood and 

 Youth " gives a pleasing picture of this pe- 

 riod of his life. He also developed an extraor- 

 dinary aptness for mechanical inventions of 



various kinds. Some of these are described 

 in the same volume. In due time he went to 

 the University of Wisconsin. His university 

 career is best described in his own words : 

 "Although I was four years at the university," 

 he wrote two years ago, "I did not take the 

 regular course of studies, but instead picked 

 out what I thought would be most useful to 

 me, particularly chemistry, which opened a 

 new world, and mathematics and physics, a 

 little Greek and Latin, botany and geology. 

 I was far from satisfied with what I had 

 learned, and should have stayed longer. Any- 

 how I wandered away on a glorious botanical 

 and geological excursion, which has lasted 

 nearly fifty years and is not yet completed, 

 always happy and free, poor and rich, without 

 thought of diploma or of making a name, 

 urged on and on through endless inspiring, 

 Godful beauty." 



It was in the early sixties that Muir started 

 off on those wanderings that finally brought 

 him to California. In the early seventies his 

 first brief communications on Tosemite and 

 the Sierra Nevada began to appear in San 

 Francisco and eastern papers. Soon his ar- 

 ticles began to be published in the Overland 

 Monthly, Harper's, Scrihner's, the Century, 

 and the Atlantic. A Reference List to the 

 published writings of John Muir, prepared 

 by Professor Cornelius B. Bradley in 1897, 

 contains the dates and titles of nearly one hun- 

 dred and fifty such articles and communica- 

 tions. At that time he had published only one 

 book, " The Mountains of California," which 

 appeared in 1894. But in "Picturesque Cali- 

 fornia," edited by him in 1888, he had con- 

 tributed articles on " Peaks and Glaciers of the 

 Sierra," " The Passes of the High Sierra," 

 "Tosemite Valley," "Mt. Shasta," "Wash- 

 ington and Puget Sound," and " The Basin of 

 the Columbia Eiver." In the Proceedings of 

 the American Association for the Advance- 

 ment of Science he was represented by papers 

 on " The Formation of Mountains in the 

 Sierra " (Vol. XXIII.), and " The Post-glacial 

 History of the Sequoia Oigantea" (Vol. 

 XXV.). 



It seems remarkable now that a man of such 



