144 The American Geologist. February, 1892 
with the larger or more powerful brains who if aided by time and 
means, or sometimes without them, can take a wider range and, 
entering into the labors of other men, can gather their results and 
combine them into one harmonious whole. 
These two orders of mind are totally different. The former is 
cumbered with details. The latter is often accused, but wrongly, 
of despising them. So far is this from the truth that such minds 
are usually the most perfect masters of details. So perfect is 
this mastery that they never lose their way among them. As one 
traveling by compass may seem careless of local waymarks while 
following the higher guide, so minds of this order appear to go 
straight to their desired end as though led by a supernatural faculty 
that is perhaps incomprehensible by their fellows. 
Without claiming for Alexander Winchell the highest position 
among these leaders of thought we think that every fair-judging 
scientist will at once allow that he deserves and will hold one of 
no mean rank. Himself a working geologist in the field, he was 
well acquainted with geological methods-—a teaching geologist in 
the university, he was skilful in imparting his own knowledge, 
and in training others to habits of observation and investigation— 
a speculative geologist in the study, he boldly followed out the 
logical deductions from his premises to their uttermost attainable 
limits, 
To those who knew him personally all this is perfectly familiar. 
Those who knew him only through his writings must be almost 
equally conscious of it. Few who have attended his lectures in 
the class-room or elsewhere can fail to testify that he possessed 
the rare and valuable ability of rousing interest and not unfre- 
quently enthusiasm in his students. None can read his World 
Life without realizing that scientific imagination of a high order 
impelled the pen that wrote under the control of the strictest logic. 
Mr. Hopkins, one of the few mathematical geologists of the 
first half of the present century, used to complain that mathema- 
ticians did not read his geological papers, and that geologists did 
not read his mathematical ones. The complaint was well founded, 
and if now made by another of the same school would be but 
slightly less true. Few geologists are competent for the latter 
task, and few mathematicians for the former. Various causes, 
many of them inevitable and natural, are responsible for this re- 
sult. But the remark of Robert Mallett is not an exaggeration of 
