226 Clarence King. 



Samuel Vernon King, having been as early as 1803 a partner 

 in the commercial house of Talbot, Olyphant & King. Four 

 of the latter's sons succeeded him in that business, the house 

 later becoming known as King & Company. James, the 

 second son, married at the early age of 21, and was obliged to 

 leave his young wife before the birth of his first child, Clarence, 

 in order to take the place of his elder brother in China. By a 

 singular fatality, three out of the four brothers died in the far 

 East, and the house of King & Company became bankrupt dur- 

 ing the crisis of 1857 through the loss of one of. the company's 

 steamers, which, under the charge of a confidential English 

 clerk (also named King) was carrying a large amount of specie 

 to meet their liabilities at another port. In this disaster was 

 involved the property of James, which had remained in the 

 firm since his death at Amoy, China, in 1848. 



The young mother, left a widow at 22, devoted herself to the 

 education of her only son, learning with an inherited, facility 

 both classical and modern languages that she might teach them 

 in turn to him, and thus was founded a close, intellectual com- 

 panionship which lasted until his death. 



King's early boyhood days were spent at Newport, but he 

 received his principal school education in the endowed high- 

 school at Hartford. 



As a very young child he showed symptoms of a decided 

 bent toward the study of natural phenomena, which was further 

 developed during long summer vacations, spent in fishing, 

 hunting and botanizing in the Green Mountains. 



In 1859 he became a member of the Sheffield Scientific 

 School, and during the two following years acquired a system- 

 atic grounding in the sciences of geology and mineralogy under 

 the inspiring teachings of James D. Dana and George J. Brush, 

 at that time their foremost exponents. Among his fellow 

 students who have since become eminent in their respective 

 professions w T ere O. C. Marsh, Arnold Hague and Samuel 

 Parsons. He graduated in 1862 with the degree of B.S., 

 being among the first students of the Scientific School to 

 receive a degree from the faculty of Yale College. 



During his college course, he was a leader among his mates 

 in athletic sports, as well as in study of nature, being captain 

 of a base-ball team and stroke oar of a racing crew. 



During the winter following his graduation, he was, for a 

 time, a student of glaciology under Agassiz, and later became a 

 devotee of the Buskinian schools of art study under the leader- 

 ship of Kussell Sturgis. 



In May, 1863, in company with his life-long friend, James T. 

 Gardiner, whose health had broken down under too close devo- 

 tion to his studies, King started on a horseback trip across the 



