Joseph Barrett. 261 



His views were formulated for the first time in his 

 Lehigh thesis of 1897, but it was not until 1913 that he 

 presented the matter in more mature form before the 

 Geological Society of America. The supposed Mesozoic 

 peneplain of southern New England was in reality, he 

 said, " stairlike or terraced in its character, facing the 

 sea," and of marine origin. It was this study that 

 was absorbing him most in recent years, and his magnum 

 opus on it was to appear a few years hence. There is 

 a manuscript dealing with it, but this represents only 

 a small part of what the final publication was intended 

 to be. 



As Barrell also taught biology at Lehigh and historical 

 geology at Yale, it was natural that he should be in- 

 terested in paleontology. This side of his activity is 

 little known away from Yale, but his colleagues there 

 knew of his deep interest and knowledge in this line. 

 Animal structures interested him as mechanisms, and 

 he tried to see the operation of the laws of mechanics 

 in them. And through his insight into paleoclimatology 

 he tried to discern the operation of the changing en- 

 vironment as the most important cause of organic 

 evolution. 



Finally, in one of his last papers, "Sources and 

 Tendencies in American Geology," he states that "geo- 

 logic research in the past generation has been passing 

 out of the qualitative stage and has partaken notably 

 of the quantitative character." In this great advance 

 he names Dana, Hall, Marsh, Cope, Powell, Dutton, Gil- 

 bert, Davis, Chamberlin, Van Hise, and Irving as those 

 who will stand out as the great leaders of the earth 

 sciences in America. 



Review of the Writings of Joseph Barrell. 



Mining Engineering. 



Barren's first experience as a mining engineer was 

 in 1894, while with the engineering corps of the Lehigh 

 Valley Coal Company, at Wilkesbarre, Pennsylvania. 

 In June, 1897, he joined the engineering corps of the 

 Butte & Boston Mining Company of Butte, Montana, 

 and worked with them and the Boston & Montana Com- 

 pany for over a year. Of this work he says: "The 

 initial wages of three dollars a day seemed a recogni- 



