Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 50.djvu/548

530 and Brighouse, in England; then passing to the Continent, studied the Alps and their glaciers.

Being invited by Prof. E. L. Youmans to contribute to the first volume of the Popular Science Monthly, he wrote for it, after a special study on the spot, the article on The Past and Future of Niagara. This was followed by two other papers—Have Plants a Pedigree? and Progression and Retrogression.

As side incidents of Prof. Gunning's career, we may mention an experiment at orange cultivation in Florida, which, proving unprofitable, lasted but a short time; and services he rendered as a mining expert in the Western Territories.

As his religious views developed they became more and more radical. The independence of thought which he showed in youth when the subject of joining the church was mentioned was never relaxed; neither did the fervor of his religious feeling diminish. He appears through his whole career as a devout believer in the Creator and the spiritual life. He was much interested in the phenomena of spiritualism and impressed by them, wrote much upon the subject, and corresponded sympathetically with spiritualists. He was a member of the Free Religious Association and a valued contributor to The Index when Mr. Abbott and Mr. Underwood were its editors, and afterward to The Open Court, and a paper written by him in 1889 is believed to embody the earliest scientific treatment of the phenomena of that category. In 1887 he delivered a course of Sunday lectures to the Unitarian Society of Keokuk, Iowa. The military body of the city made him their chaplain. An Ethical Society was organized there, of which he served as pastor till January, 1888, when he removed to Greeley, Colorado, hoping to find relief there from frequently recurring attacks of bronchitis. He made an engagement with a Unitarian Society in Greeley, but two addresses—A Study of the Book of Job, and The Whirling Flag, Dante's Inferno—were all he was able to make in fulfillment of it. His health had long been delicate. A friend had warned him, in connection with his lectures in Cincinnati, in the winter of 1886, that he was "mad" to continue his labors in the existing condition of his health and in such weather. Yet he stopped, on his way from Keokuk to Greeley—only two months before he succumbed to his disease—to deliver a course of lectures in Quincy, Ill., which proved as acceptable as any of the long series. Of Prof. Gunning's amiable personal qualities all his friends speak in terms of warm enthusiasm. He was conscious, self-reliant, and tranquil to the last.