672 Grove Karl Gilbert. 



writing. He had also to do with the installation of ex- 

 hibits in museums; it may have been in the course of 

 journeys then undertaken that he learned something of 

 the Appalachians, to which he refers in a most appre- 

 ciative manner in his first western report. 



The philosophy of geology could have been learned no 

 better during these five laborious years of clerkship than 

 during the preceding eight years of school and college 

 study ; yet a liking for the science seems to have grown 

 up, for Gilbert next became a volunteer assistant on the 

 Ohio Geological Survey, where he worked under New- 

 berry from 1868 to 1870, receiving pay only for his field 

 expenses. His drawings of fossil fishes are praised by 

 his chief, but the best known result of this period of 

 apprenticeship is his report on the surface geology of 

 the Maumee " valley/ ' a district of very faint relief lying 

 southwest of Lake Erie. It is interesting now to note 

 that Gilbert here attributed the higher levels of the lake, 

 as attested by abandoned shorelines on the adjoining 

 plains, to a former up warping of the land in the lower 

 St. Lawrence valley, an idea which he mentioned again 

 five years later in his report on the Henry mountains ; it 

 was Newberry who, in a footnote, explained the higher 

 lake levels by a retreating glacial barrier. When Gil- 

 bert was fifteen years older and greatly matured by his 

 studies in the West, he returned to the region of the Great 

 Lakes and recognizing the correctness of Newberry's 

 opinion eventually brought out a masterful essay on the 

 history of Niagara Falls, as will be further told below. 



Gilbert's larger career began on the Wheeler Survey, 

 which took him to Utah, Nevada and Arizona between 

 1871 and 1874. His first season of western work led him 

 into problems that engaged his lifelong interest. Would 

 that we had a narrative of his personal experiences and 

 his mental progress in those new surroundings ! The 

 several chapters in his reports cover a large range of 

 subjects : — stratigraphy, volcanic phenomena, plateaus 

 and canyons, glacial and lacustrine records, and the 

 mountain ranges of the Great Basin. Powell's and Dut- 

 ton's more extended descriptions of the plateau province 

 have distracted attention from the large contributions 

 that Gilbert made to its elucidation. On the other hand 

 the Basin ranges and the Lake Bonneville came to be 

 regarded as peculiarly Gilbert's problems. 



The theoretical discussion of the Basin ranges, for the 



