MEMOIR OF RALPH STOCKMAN TARR 33 



"I was very busy all summer and kept myself pretty close to my temporary 

 study. I came here September 1 and am again well in the harness. ... I 

 must apologize for my silence this summer, but I got my nose down to the 

 grindstone and could not get it away." 



On October 1 Tarr gave an explanation of his unusual silence : 



"I have put in eight solid hours a day, and as a result I have finished a text- 

 book on economic geology, and yesterday sent the manuscript and illustrations 

 complete to the publisher. It was my plan to do a little field work near Glou- 

 cester, do a good deal of much needed reading, and prepare a syllabus on 

 economic geology for use in my class in the spring term, for, as you no doubt 

 know, there is no suitable text-book on the subject. I soon found that the 

 syllabus would require as much time as a text-book, very nearly, and the idea 

 dawned on me that I might as well do the latter; so off came my coat, and 

 between July and October I wrote 1,000 pages of manuscript, blue-book size, 

 and then rewrote it, besides preparing about thirty illustrations. I had the 

 subject fairly well in hand and had complete notes and a fairly good library, 

 otherwise I could not have done it." 



This letter affords an authoritative explanation of the writing of the 

 Economic Geology. Older and then more experienced geologists, per- 

 haps from modesty, perhaps from temerity, had refrained from prepar- 

 ing a work such as Tarr needed. The small hand-book by Dr. S. G. 

 Williams, 4 his predecessor at Cornell, in the teaching of economic geology 

 was out of date, if not out of print. There was a demand for a book on 

 the subject. Tarr took the bull by the horns, and without saying a word 

 to any one produced his book, and ran the gauntlet of reviews wliich fol- 

 lowed. The experience was instructive. In it Tarr measured his powers 

 for the writing of books. He learned that the writer of geological 

 pamphlets, such as he had so far been, was regarded by his fellow-crafts- 

 men as doing the normal expectable thing and worthy of all praise, and 

 that the author of a book addressed ostensibly to those outside of the 

 profession, though about to enter it, is regarded with jealous solicitude 

 by friends, acquaintances, and strangers who may or may not have made 

 similar ventures in the domain of authorship lying beyond the borders of 

 the pamphleteer. Whether or not it was a wise move to have written this 

 book, Tarr showed by doing it his indomitable industry ami courage. 

 The experience prepared him for the work which he was later to under- 

 take in the field of physical geography. 



The summer of 1903 was devoted to field-work about Cornel] Uni- 

 versity. 



* Samuel G. Williams: Applied geology. New YorU : I >. AppletOD A Co., L886, pp KM, 



:',s<;. 



Ill— Bull. Ceol. Soc. Am.. Vol. 24, 1012 



