358 
BRIDGING THE AGES OF ICE 
is especially fitting that Iowa should in so artistic a manner and 
in so permanent a form commemorate such unique event. 
Had McGee, at this early stage of his career, been somewhat 
more independent in his mode of thinking he doubtless would 
have stumbled upon the proper interpretation of what was placed 
so clearly and so conspicuously before him. In an earnest en¬ 
deavor to harmonize his novel results with the theoretical de¬ 
ductions of Chamberlin, then recently published, he entirely missed 
the larger and more comprehensive significance of his fundamental 
observations. As it was, this distinguished pioneer in the field 
of Glaciology narrowly escaped making one of the half-dozen 
great geological discoveries of the Nineteenth Century — the es¬ 
tablishment of the broad generalization of the complexity of the 
Glacial Period. 
