676 Grove Karl Gilbert. 



Lake Lahontan, but as yet it has had no other. The 

 chapter on the " Topographic features of lake shores," 

 originally published as one of the brilliant essays with 

 which Powell enriched his annual reports as director of 

 the national Geological Survey, and reissued as the cor- 

 nerstone of the final monograph, deserves special men- 

 tion because it gave so great an impetus to rational 

 physiography. It held good for sea shores as well as for 

 lake shores, and every one of its uncounted readers must 

 have discovered in it a fuller treatment of such shoreline 

 features as he had somewhere seen than he had found in 

 any text-book, and far better than he had prepared 

 himself. 



The establishment of the United States Geological 

 Survey in 1879 caused a fateful turn in Gilbert's life. 

 Its first effect was to give him unrivalled opportunity for 

 the detailed study and — after delay owing to the intru- 

 sion of other duties — the handsome publication of the 

 Bonneville problem, as above noted; but its longer last- 

 ing effect was to withdraw him from the western field, 

 where his work had been so fruitful and where he would 

 have so gladly gone on working ; he was not only placed 

 for some years (1884-1888) in charge of Appalachian 

 geology, but was for a time (1889-1892) burdened with 

 the executive duties of " chief geologist,'' a position for 

 which he had neither especial fondness nor marked fit- 

 ness. Yet when the director of the Survey called him to 

 these duties, he put aside a cherished plan of continuing 

 his work in the Great Basin — especially a research into 

 the strength of the earth's crust as indicated by the 

 deformation of the Bonneville shorelines — and, with self- 

 denying devotion, took up the tasks assigned to him: 

 but he said, in his address on the " Inculcation of Scien- 

 entific Method": — "It is hardly necessary for me to 

 assure you that my personal regret in abandoning this 

 research at its present stage is very great." 



Gilbert never reaped any significant public advantage 

 from his supervision of the Appalachian division, for 

 with characteristic generosity he gave such results as his 

 limited opportunity for field work afforded to his 

 assistants and his friends, as contributions to their more 

 detailed investigations. As chief geologist he was in a 

 manner embarrassed by his habit of deliberation, for 

 Survey problems usually called for prompt decision. It 

 was, therefore, fortunate that, when Powell withdrew 



