AMERICAN GEOLOGY SURVEY UNDER KINO. 615 



self placed in charge, subject only to the administrative control of 

 Gen. A. A. Humphrey, as already mentioned. 



The published results of this survey we have already reviewed. As 

 described b} 7 Emmons, from whose sketch most of what is here given 

 of the personal history of King- is quoted, ''probably no more masterly 

 summary of the great truths of geology had been made since the pub- 

 lication of Lyell's Principles/' Making due allowance for the enthu- 

 siasm of one who was an associate and warm personal friend, attention 

 need only be called to the fact that the entire work was consummated 

 before its author saw his fortieth birthday, to establish once and for all 

 King's fame as an organizer and geologist. 



Aside from the publications under this survey, King's bibliography 

 contains few titles, but this may mean simply that neither ink nor 

 words were wasted. In 1877 he delivered an address at the thirty-first 

 anniversary of the Sheffield Scientific School on Catastrophism and the 

 Evolution of Environment, which Emmons characterized as a "pro- 

 test against the extreme uniformitarianism of that day." It was 

 naturally based largely on his Fortieth Parallel work. This uniform- 

 itarianism he described as ""the harmless undestructive rate (of geo- 

 logical changes) of to-day prolonged backward into the deep past." 

 He contended that while the old belief in catastrophic changes had 

 properly disappeared, yet geological history, as he read it, showed 

 that the rate of change had not been uniform, as was claimed by the 

 later school. He believed rather, as a result of his own observations, 

 that at certain periods in geological histoiy the rate of change had 

 been accelerated to such a degree that the effect produced upon life 

 was somewhat catastrophic in its nature. 



One act in King's professional career should be here referred to, 

 although the story has often been told. It will be remembered that in 

 1872 there was made a reported discovery of a diamond field in south- 

 ern Arizona within an area that had been gone over in the course of 

 the work of the Fortieth Parallel Survey. King, for purely scientific 

 purposes, undertook a study of the region, with the purpose of dis- 

 covering something regarding the matrix and the origin of the dia- 

 mond. He discovered, rather, that the whole matter was a stupendous 

 fraud; that, so far from there being a diamond mine, the ground had 

 been "salted." So soon as this discovery was made King started for 

 San Francisco, traveling night and day, that he might outstrip all other 

 possible sources of information. On his arrival he at once visited the 

 offices of the directors of the company organized for the selling of 

 stock, and demanded peremptorily that all issues should be stopped. 

 To a suggestion that his announcement of the fraudulent nature of the 

 claim be dela} T ed temporarily, he replied: "There is not money enough 

 in the Bank of California to induce me to delay this announcement a 

 single hour." And it was not delayed. 



