MEMOIR OF W J MC GEE 21 



position until July 31, 1903, when he resigned to assume charge of the 

 Department of Anthropology of the St. Louis Exposition, where he 

 brought together an unprecedented assemblage of the world's peoples. 

 At the close of the exposition he became the first director of the St. 

 Louis Public Museum, continuing in this position from 1905 to 1907. 

 On March 14, 1907, President Roosevelt created an Inland Waterways 

 Commission, and at the first meeting of this Commission Doctor McGee 

 was elected vice-chairman and secretary, a position he continued to fill 

 until his death. About the same time (March 23, 1907) he was ap- 

 pointed as an expert in soil waters in the Bureau of Soils, U. S. Depart- 

 ment of Agriculture, and in this position he also continued until his 

 death. 



Aside from the honors and responsibilities which came with a busy 

 official life, many additional honors were conferred upon Doctor McGee. 

 He was one of the principal founders of the Columbia Historical Society ; 

 sometime president of the American Anthropological Association, the 

 Anthropological Society of Washington, the National Geographic Society, 

 and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (1897). 

 He was the senior speaker in the department of anthropology at the 

 World's Congress of Arts and Sciences in 1904, and non-resident lecturer 

 on anthropology at the State University of Iowa. In 1901, in recogni- 

 tion of his distinguished attainments, the degree of LL. D. was conferred 

 on him by Cornell College, Iowa, at which time he presented a compre- 

 hensive essay on the "Beginnings of mathematics." 



In 1888 Doctor McGee was married to Anita Newcomb, who, with a 

 son and daughter, survives him. 



In the field of the Pleistocene geology of the upper Mississippi Valley 

 McGee was really a pioneer. At the time lie began his studies very little 

 was known of the glacial history of this region, and he did much to estab- 

 lish a knowledge of the succession of invasions and recessions of the ice- 

 sheet, and while many of his conclusions have been subject to revision in 

 the light of fuller modern investigation, much of his work remains, and 

 must remain, as a basis on which subsequent knowledge- is to he builded. 



McGee's most notable contributions to American geology are, o( course. 

 in the Atlantic Coastal Plain. In I his Held (here must ever be associated 

 filenames of four notable studonls — Hilgard, Smith. Hall, and McGee. 

 These men have laid the foundation, however much it has been, or in 

 future will be, modified, upon which all subsequent work must he erected. 

 In the particular phase of (he subject which McGee made his own he was 

 again a. pioneer. He saw and appreciated the broad problems of Btrati- 

 graphic continuity and succession, of continental elevation and depres- 



