Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 13.djvu/10

2 stages through which this Oregon home of ours has, as a whole, passed in coming to its present development.

Mrs. Ellen Condon McCornack, in the introductory paper of this series, gives a delightful sketch of the conditions that obtained here when this section of the globe was in preparation for the advent of man.

The indefatigable research of her father, Thomas Condon, Oregon's most illustrious scientist, provided the materials for this picture. In the early sixties, while Oregon was yet a wilderness and isolated from the world, he began an assiduous labor of love, that of reading the story of Oregon's past as recorded in the exposed strata of rock found in different parts of the state. His work of nearly half-a-century led to discoveries that contributed most important elements to the perfecting of the theory of evolution, the nineteenth century's most important addition to the world's body of scientific knowledge.