COTTON CULTURE REPORTS 177 



that. Don^t let us do it again." But all was not lost in the quarto vol- 

 umes, for in Alabama and South Carolina at least the Cotton Culture 

 Reports were republished as State Geological Survey Eeports, and have 

 been very thoroughly appreciated and have furnished the meat for numer- 

 ous subsequent handbooks. 



Personally, Doctor Hilgard is one of the most lovable of men. His 

 extraordinary fund of general as well as of special information, along 

 with his cheerfulness and vivacity, notwithstanding the handicap of a 

 rather frail constitution, make him a delightful companion, and his letters, 

 even on technical or scientific matters, ^re always enlivened by humorous 

 and witty remarks, so that they are truly good reading. 



Although he came to America as a young man, he is master of the 

 English language, as his numerous writings will show, and in his spoken 

 word there is practically nothing of the foreign accent, although there is 

 a slight lisp which might perhaps be mistaken for it. In German, of 

 course, and in French and Spanish he appears equally at home and fluent. 

 Meeting with him in 1891 after a lapse of 20 years, I could see no signs 

 of advancing age, no gray hairs. Only a few months ago in a letter he 

 says, "DonH forget to come out this way whenever you can — I may live 

 a while yet, despite accidents," referring to a fall from a step-ladder sus- 

 tained by him a year ago, which resulted in quite a serious shock and the 

 fracture of a bone. May he live long and prosper. 



Researches of W J McGee 



This sketch would by no means be complete without special mention of 

 the great work of W J McGee on the Lafayette formation. McGee's 

 early work was on the glacial formations of his native state, Iowa, but 

 later, as the Chief Assistant of Major Powell, Director of the United 

 States Geological Survey, his studies extended to the formations ^about 

 "Washington, Chesapeake Bay, Potomac River, and thence down the At- 

 lantic Coastal Plain and westward to the Mississippi Embayment. 



The Pleistocene formations in this territory he named Columbia and 

 described in much detail. The Atlantic Coast equivalent of Hilgard's 

 '^Orange Sand" he called "Appomattox." Since by the rulings of the 

 United States Geological Survey the use of descriptive names for forma- 

 tions was tabooed, he was generous enough to agree to leave to Doctor 

 Hilgard the selection of another name for the formation which would 

 pass muster at headquarters. After a conference between McGee, Hilgard, 

 Le Conte, and Loughridge, the name Lafayette was accepted, the type 

 locality being the exposures in Lafayette County, Mississippi, in the east- 

 em part of which many characteristic occurrences of the "red sand" and 



XII — Bull. Geol. Soc. Am., Vol. 25, 1913 



