358 The American Geologist. December, looi 
heavy, and often large. Had large streams or other bodies 
of water existed where the loess is deposited, thus furnish- 
ing conditions favorable to this tluviatile fauna, it is reason- 
able to suppose that some of these shells would be found fos- 
sil today to relate the story of the conditions under which 
thev existed. Yet no such evidence has ever been found in 
undoubted undisturbed loess, and the conclusion that such 
bodies of water did not exist where loess is now found is 
irresistible. Indeed the molluscan fauna of the loess points 
to comparatively dry, upland, terrestrial conditions such as 
exist over the greater part of Iowa today. It suggests land- 
surfaces clothed with vegetation offering shelter and food 
to terrestrial snails, — a vegetation developed under medium 
Conditions of moisture and temperature such as exist here 
todav. 
PROF. W. H. BARRIS. 
By C. H. Prkston, M. n. 
PORTR.4IT. 
Willis Hervey Barris, D. D., scientist, educator and church- 
man, died at his home in Davenport, Iowa, June loth, 1901, 
having almost completed his eightieth year. Senior priest of 
the Episcopal Diocese of Iowa and Curator of the Davenport 
Academy of Science at the time of his death, the close of a long 
and useful life found him still at work, as always, to the ex- 
tent of his strength, in the conscientious discharge of duty. 
Born in Beaver county, Pennsylvania, July 9, 1820, he 
entered Alleghany college, Meadville, Pennsylvania, at the 
age of fourteen ; received the degree of A. B. in 1839, and 
completed a, post graduate course - in civil engineering in 
1841. In 1854 his alma mater conferred on him the degree 
of ' A. M. His career in Alleghany college said its presi- 
dent, Dr. Baker, "Was equally homorable to the college and 
to himself." He was "an excellent scholar in every de- 
partment of the college course," with a "decided penchant 
for scientific pursuits." At the age of twenty-one he en- 
tered upon a course of theological study and was graduated 
from the' General Theological Seminary, New York City — 
the oldest Protestant-Episcopal theological school in the 
United States — in 1850. 
