GEOLOGICAL CRITICISM 
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the detail configuration throughout say 90% of the area has the character 
of waterwork rather than windwork. Now the windwork hypothesis 
would seem to explain the general features, albeit most of us are so set 
in our ways of thought as not to see this readily, but can hardly be made 
acceptable to most of us without some consistent explanation of the rarity 
of its ear-marks on the vast footslopes forming the greater part of the 
area of the Great Basin. Nevertheless, for one I am willing to give 
Keyes and Hill and Cross and Free and all the rest of the workers the 
fullest opportunity to work out details and improve inconsistencies, for 
while art is long, science is longer and must have not merely its day in 
court but its decade of re-trial. Another consideration also impresses me. 
Of late what is sometimes called “problem” geology is temporarily out 
of fashion, at least in this country; and I cannot help feeling that those 
of us who are predisposed toward the long look both backward and 
forward-should seize every reasonable opportunity for encouraging the 
presentation of problems promising to advance the fundamentals of our 
knowledge. So again, in a word, I incline strongly toward giving Keyes 
the benefit of the doubt. 
Most Productive: Fie:ld in Historical Ge:ology 
On that most enjoyable evening 'which members of the Trans¬ 
continental Excursion from the Twelfth International Geological 
Congress spent at Field Station in the heart of the Canadian 
Rockies Doctor Walcott, having come down from his eyrie high 
up above timber-line on Mount Field, his famous “Burgess 
Camp,” incidentally remarked in the course of his informal lecture 
that the Pre-Cambrian section of the West presented the most 
fruitful theme that today awaits the young and ambitious geolo¬ 
gist. Recent novel conceptions and developments have greatly 
emphasized the cogent necessity and desirability for early and 
concerted action in unearthing life forms from the rocks lying 
beneath the Paleozoics which we now know. 
An amazing circumstance connected with the consideration 
of the pre-Cambrian formations of this country is the notable 
absence of that strong and concerted effort towards exact corre¬ 
lation which so long has characterized the descriptions of Ahe 
younger rocks. To be sure numerous local sections are con¬ 
structed, but nowhere is there hint of their reduction to a definite 
scheme based upon time-equivalency. 
In this regard general treatment of the pre-Cambrian rocks 
presents a very marked contrast with that of other geological 
terranes. In the final analysis their consideration and their map- 
