MEMOIR OF J. PETER LESLEY 535 



He was an original member of the National Academy of Sciences and 

 was president of the American Association for Advancement of Science 

 in 1884. 



Professor Lesley's first important publication was the little volume 

 entitled " Coal and its Topography," which appeared in 1856. Professor 

 Rogers, after completing the field work necessary for preparation of his 

 final report, had gone to Edinburgh to supervise the publication. By 

 some means, early in 1856, Lesley learned that in this report the geolo- 

 gists who had done the field work, who had solved the problems of geology 

 and topography, and had made some of the most important generaliza- 

 tions were to be ignored. The information was not quite exact, for when 

 the report appeared a list of those who had been connected with the 

 survey was given in the preface, so that one may not say that they were 

 wholly ignored. Spurred by indignation, Lesley wrote the book to pre- 

 serve for his colleagues at least a share of the credit which was their due. 

 The work was done amid the cares of a great practice, much of it at night 

 after fatiguing days at the office, yet in six weeks the manuscript was 

 ready for the press. The book served the purpose ; as it were, incident- 

 ally it defined the area and work of the several geologists, but it was 

 more important than its author intended or supposed. There one finds 

 the first systematic grouping of the Appalachian coal beds and the first 

 attempt at genuine correlation with beds elsewhere. The general de- 

 scription of coal and coal beds, as well as of the condition of their occur- 

 rence, is still unexcelled, while the discussion of topography in the second 

 part remains, even in the light of present knowledge, one of the most 

 brilliant CDntributions to physical geography, anticipating, not in germ, 

 but in full, much of what is termed the modern method. 



A work of wholly different type is " Man's Origin and Destiny, 1 ' the 

 Lowell lectures for 1865-1866, which appeared in 1868. The subjects 

 range from signification of the sciences through the antiquity, dignity, and 

 social life of mankind to origin of architecture growth of the alphabet, 

 types of religious worship, and, finally, to what he terms arkite sym- 

 bolism. When one considers that these lectures were prepared away from 

 home and without access to books, he must admire the industry which 

 had gathered a so great mass of knowledge, the memory which could 

 retain it, and the mind so systematic as to make it readily available. 

 Much of the work, it is true, is no longer important, as many of the con- 

 clusions were based on current, but erroneous, interpretation of oriental 

 documents, yet students familiar with the results of recent investigations 

 can not fail to find much of value in the author's method. If some of 

 the parallelisms appear absurd today, the reader should remember that 

 they were legitimate according to the philological methods of forty years 



