MEMORIAL OF AMOS BOWMAN. 441 



MEMORIAL OF AMOS BO^ylMAN 

 BY II. M. AMI 



Amos Bowman, whose deatli was announced'^ at the Brooklyn meet- 

 ing, on the 14th of August hist, was elected Fellow of this Society in May, 

 1889. He was horn in Blair, Waterloo county, Ontario, Canada, Sep- 

 temher 15, 1839. When a youth his parents removed to Waterville, Ohio. 

 In 1856, when only seventeen, he went to New York city to study medi- 

 cine. There he did considerable journalistic work. From New York 

 he went to California in its early da3^s, and became connected with the 

 Sacramento Union, the leading pai)er of that state. Mr Bowman is next 

 seen in Germany, where he spent nearly three years in pursuing and 

 completing a course in civil and mining engineering. 



He visited Russia, Austria and other countries in Europe, on which he 

 wrote several articles for the American press. He attended lectures at 

 Freiberg and ^Munich, and, returning to California, was brought in con- 

 tact with many pu])lic men, especially through articles in the columns 

 of both the New York Tribune and the Sacramento Union, with the latter 

 of which he was connected for some five years. 



His first survey work was done in 1863, at the age of twenty-four, when 

 he assisted in the survey of the boundary line between California and 

 Nevada. He was largely instrumental in getting the appropriation 

 granted for the organization of the Geological Survey of California under 

 J. D. Whitney, then professor of geology at Harvard. In 1868 he was 

 appointed to a position in the Geological Survey of California, and, owing 

 to the numerous duties devolving upon its director in the east, INTr Bow- 

 man in his abisence had cliarge both of the field and ofiice work, duties 

 he discharged for several years, until the close of the survey. 



From 1873 to 1876 he was engaged in survey work for private mining 

 corporations. The most important of these was eml)odied in a mining 

 and topographic report on the Georgetown divide, published in 1874. 



Mr Bowman was the first to define the terraces along the Pacific coast — 

 in Wasliington territory and adjacent sliores, and contributed a chapter 

 on "Pliocene rivers of California" in the " Repijrt of the United States 

 Mineral Resources for 1873." 



In Briti.sh Columbia, Mr Bowman l)egan work in 1S76 as assistant to 

 Dr G. M. Dawson. As a joint employe of the provincial government of 



• Bull. Geol. Sof-. Am., vol. 6, 1894, p. 1. 



He died of acute BriKht's disease on the istli of .luue, isoi, at lii.s home on Cap Sant<'', Wasliing- 

 ton. This disease was doubtless aggravated, if not iixhued, liy a severe cold and complication of 

 di.«»orilers, >>rouglit on l>y undue exposure and hardships endured in a severe storm of!" the west 

 coast on his way to Victoria, British Columbia, whither ho wa.s going to complete a report on a 

 section of that province for the local authorities. 



