Grove Karl Gilbert. 675 



the general distribution of the formations, and the 

 remainder of the time was spent in the examination of 

 the localities which best displayed the peculiar features 

 of the structure. So thorough was the display and so 

 satisfactory the examination, that in preparing my 

 report I have felt less than ever before the desire to 

 re-visit the field and prove my conclusions by more 

 extended observations. ' ' The method of presentation, 

 beginning with covered laccoliths and ending with 

 denuded and partly undermined laccoliths, is so persua- 

 sive of the announced conclusions that the need of revis- 

 ing them has seldom been suggested. 



The closing chapter of the Henry Mountains report, an 

 essay on "Land Sculpture," has in this country at least 

 been of greater service though not of greater interest 

 than the four which precede it. The contents of the 

 famous essay cannot be analyzed here; but two pecu- 

 liarities of its treatment may be mentioned. One is the 

 lack of reference to similar work by foreign students, for 

 though several Americans are named, Hopkins is the only 

 European mentioned; and this was naturally enough 

 unsatisfactory to geologists and geographers abroad; 

 but the fact of the case seems to be that Gilbert, like most 

 of his early colleagues, had never been trained in the 

 time-consuming but dutiful labor of looking up the "lit- 

 erature" of a subject, and that he was so absorbed in his 

 western problems and so overwhelmed with the abund- 

 ance of new material to be described, that he had no time 

 to look across the ocean in search of precedents for his 

 opinions. Another peculiarity, harder to account for, is 

 the complete absence of Powell's term, baselevel, which 

 had been published in 1875 ; indeed even the fundamental 

 principle embodied in the term is hardly touched upon, 

 except in so far as it is tacitly implied in the discussion 

 of "declivity." 



The study of Lake Bonneville, which Gilbert began 

 under Wheeler and continued under Powell, was carried 

 farther in the field and published in more elaborate form 

 than any other subject that he undertook. It became his 

 own problem and is so still, although a new interpreta- 

 tion of the shoreline chronology has been proposed by 

 recent observers. The Bonneville monograph estab- 

 lished a high standard with respect to which the records 

 of vanished lakes in all arid continental basins must be 

 treated. Its first sequel was Russell's monograph on 



