30 PROCEEDINGS OF THE BOSTON MEETING 



Cosmos Hall "was devoted to the assemblage and preparation of scien- 

 tific material for museums of natural history. ... Its work was 

 performed largely by young men of congenial tastes, who there acquired 

 the practical experience which commended them later to the trustees of 

 larger responsibilities. It thus served incidentally as a training school 

 in the natural sciences. . . ." ^ 



Among the graduates of this institution were a number of men who 

 have since become distinguished in various departments of natural his- 

 tory. Gilbert spoke of himself "somewhat proudly" as "senior alumnus" 

 of this unique establishment. Professor Ward was a remarkable per- 

 sonality, an enthusiastic collector, a man with a broad knowledge of 

 science and a wide acquaintance with scientific men here and abroad. 

 He is described as a most interesting and inspiring companion and a 

 skillful raconteur with an inexhaustible fund of humorous stories. 



The five years spent in intimate association with Ward at the very 

 beginning of his career undoubtedly aroused Gilbert's latent scientific 

 bent, served as a postgraduate scientific course, and developed his strong 

 inherent tendency toward system and accuracy in the consideration and 

 discussion of natural phenomena. 



Gilbert was not a geologist, nor yet a scientist, when he joined Pro- 

 fessor Ward's establishment; but while there he prepared and published 

 his first paper, a well written popular article on "The American mas- 

 todon," which appeared in Moore's Rural New Yorlcer on March 2, 1867. 

 In Prof. James Hall's ^ description of the "Cohoes mastodon," Gilbert 

 is credited with the measurements and comparisons of the part^ of the 

 skeleton which he had excavated and mounted in the State House at 

 Albany. To this paper he also contributed a signed chapter on the 

 circumstances of the deposition of the skeleton, in which an interesting 

 estimate of 35,000 years is given for the period that has elapsed during 

 the recession of Cohoes Falls from the mastodon pothole to its present 

 position. Professor Fairchild fixes the date of the field-work on which 

 this essay is based as 1866, when Gilbert was 33 years old, but says the 

 paper may have been completed as much as two years later.® The date 

 of publication is 1871 and of transmittal 1868. 



Gilbert's interest in geologic research, stimulated by this problem, led- 

 him to seek an appointment as assistant on the Second Geological Survey 



* G. K. Gilbert : Memoir of Edwin E. Howel. Bull. Geol. Soc. Am., vol. 2.3, 1912, p. 30 

 s Twenty-first Annual Report of the New York State Museum of Natural History, 1871. 



pp. 99-148. 



6 H. L. Fairchild : Grove Karl Gilbert. Proceedings of the Rochester Academy of 



Sciences, vol. 5, 1919. 



