38 PROCEEDINGS OF THE NEW HAVEN MEETING 



valley, through glaciers; in river work, potomography — to use the for- 

 gotten terminology of Edward Hitchcock — Tarr called attention to ex- 

 tended rivers and anastomosing streams. 



Tarr's glacial work began under Shaler in the classification and map- 

 ping of the moraines of southern New England long before he had ever 

 seen a glacier and at a time when the stratified drift was still known as 

 modified drift, implying that in origin the gravels and sands were later 

 in origin than the boulder-clay and till. The problems which arose at 

 that time in Tarr's mind in the. attempt to imagine the relations of 

 eskers, kames, and kettle-boles to the vanished ice-sheet found partial 

 and in some cases complete explanation in the phenomena of the exist- 

 ing ice-fields of Alaska. Tarr's illustrations of kettle-holes in the out- 

 wash plains of Alaska are the best illustrations we have. Although it 

 is true that the diagnosis of these ancient glacial deposits of middle lati- 

 tudes had been correctly made by those who may never have seen a 

 glacier, Tarr's illustrations and descriptions came as a welcome con- 

 firmation of deductions made in a science which professes to proceed 

 from the observation of existing causes to the interpretation of past 

 effects. That the deductions were correctly drawn is due to the suffi- 

 ciency of the glacial theory to explain more than its founders included 

 in its original application. 



Tarr wrote readily. He had the faculty of putting on paper his 

 thoughts at top speed, and it is this element in his style which gave his 

 writings the power which few text-books ever possess. It is said that 

 when his Physical Geography came out and was introduced into the 

 schools, that the parents of those pupils who had the book took it up and 

 read it ! If in the first edition of a work there were slips of language or 

 transpositions of the viewpoint, as when in writing in Ithaca his thought 

 was projected northwestward to the site of the north magnetic pole, 

 leading him to write of that geographic point as southwest of the North 

 Pole, the misstatement was obvious and readily corrected. The wonder 

 is that in writing so much he made so few mistakes. 



His writings display a steady growth from small beginnings in the 

 published lists of a collecting naturalist to the monograph on the Alaskan 

 earthquake of 1899. His Alaskan work properly crowns his labors in 

 physical geography and geology. It was done in the prime of life, and 

 not only in quantity, but in quality, it must be admitted to take a high 

 rank among the contributions to North American geology and physical 

 geography. 



Turning now to Tarr the Cornell professor, we find him an inspiring 

 instructor and leader of young men.i Of his students who have followed 



