6 GEORGE FERDINAND BECKER— MERRILL [M ™ 01R \?£Txi, 



Triassic upheavel in the Sierra probably identical with a disturbance which has been recognized 

 in British Columbia. Two sets of earlier Cretaceous beds (divisions of the Shasta group) are 

 contemporaneous or continuous. Authentic information not previously published shows that 

 California was inhabited by men in the Neolithic stage of development, before the main glacia- 

 tion of the Sierra. The glacial period of the Sierra probably began and ended much later than 

 that of northeastern America. The deep canyons of the modern rivers of the Sierra were due 

 to the protecting action of the glaciers on the higher part of the range. 



A large portion of the Sierra, he thought, was affected by systematically disposed fissures 

 or joints. A study of their peculiarities showed to him that this network of divisions was produced 

 by a pressure acting on the range downward from the south-southwest. This pressure, he 

 thought, could be accounted for by the weight of the sediments in the great valley of Cali- 

 fornia, provided that the earth is a solid, highly viscous mass, but not if the interior is fluid. 



The fissure systems, he argued, controlled to a large extent the emission of eruptive rocks. 

 They affected the modeling of the country and also indirectly explained the formation of the 

 canyons, among them the Yosemite Valley and the great domes of that region. 



During the winter of 1892 Doctor Becker made his first systematic studies of the deform- 

 ing effects of great pressures. This he regarded as essential to a comprehension of the structure 

 (announced later) and showing that relative elevation must attend the formation of slate. 

 The theory, to him, accounted for the distribution and spacing of fissures or cracks when the 

 action is slow. In the same connection he accounted for the columnar structure of many 

 lavas and gave a simple proof of the fact that the pebbles in auriferous river channels and other 

 watercourses "shingle upstream." 



A reconnaissance of the gold fields of southern Alaska by Becker in 1895 afforded inciden- 

 tally material for an interesting theoretical discussion of vulcanism and the shape of volcanic 

 cones, in which it was shown that such tend to approach definite geometrical form almost 

 exactly coinciding with that of Fujisan, Japan, but that steeper shapes will not form on a large 

 scale by ejection from a central vent. 



In 1896, under the auspices of an English company, Doctor Becker v ! sited the Wittwater- 

 strand of South Africa for the purpose of studying the gold fields. Aside from whatever report 

 he may have made to the company, his observations found their way into print in the Eighteenth 

 Annual Report of the United States Geological Survey (1896-97) and the Zeitschrift fur Geo- 

 logie Praktique, besides less technical accounts in the National Geographic Magazine and the 

 London Economist. In all these publications Doctor Becker held the ground of the marine 

 origin of the gold-bearing gravels and the alluvial origin of the gold itself, in opposition to De 

 Launay and others, who thought it precipitated from a saturated solution of gold and pyrite 

 in sea water. He noted that "in the pre- Tertiary rocks only those gravels remain which were 

 protected by superjacent beds and allowed to indurate. River gravels, as such, could escape 

 dispersion only when during subsidence they were immediately covered by fresh deposits, 

 without undergoing any notable wave action." Hence the extreme rarity of pre- Tertiary 

 river gravels. Such an origin — i. e., as marine, rather than as river gravels — he felt furnished 

 a strong reason for the belief of their prolonged productiveness. 



It was while employed in this work that Doctor Becker became conversant in some detail 

 with matters relating to the Jameson raid and the Boer war and led to the preparation of an 

 article on "The revolt of the Uitlanders," published in the National Geographic Magazine of 

 that year. In this he set forth in a dispassionate and impartial way the prevailing conditions 

 as they appeared to an outsider, and through his personal influence with President Krueger 

 he is said to have been instrumental in bringing about an amicable settlement of certain diffi- 

 culties that threatened to lead to international complications. 



The most original, outstanding, and valuable of Doctor Becker's work was not, however, 

 along the lines of descriptive geology. His interests lay largely in the more abstruse chemico- 

 physical problems and concerning which he had almost from the start taken advanced grounds, 

 not merely in relation to the problems to be solved, but, as well, to the methods of their solu- 

 tion. Along these lines he was a pioneer, and it was not too much to claim that the present 



