Clarence King. 233 



equipped in this, as in other respects, to carry on the investiga- 

 tions he had undertaken into the problems of the interior of 

 the earth. 



In 1890, Brown University conferred upon him the honorary 

 degree of LL.D. That he received no public recognition of 

 his later scientific work may perhaps be ascribed to its peculiarly 

 unobtrusive character, which gave rise to the erroneous impres- 

 sion that he had abandoned science altogether. 



It is difficult to fairly judge King's scientific publications in 

 the light of the present day, for they were written just before 

 the opening of an era of great change in the methods of geo- 

 logical investigation, a change which has thus far proved 

 destructive rather than constructive in its results. Many of 

 the fundamental theories of geology which prevailed at that 

 time have been disproved or abandoned, while as yet there is 

 no general acceptance of those which have been put forward 

 to replace them. 



In June, 1877, he delivered the address at the 31st anni- 

 versary of the Sheffield Scientific School on " Catastrophism 

 and the Evolution of Environment." It was a protest against 

 the extreme uniformitarianism of that day, based largely 

 on the geological history of the Cordilleran System as 

 developed during the work of the 40th Parallel Survey. 

 This uniformitarianism he characteristically described as 

 "the harmless undestructive rate (of geological change) of 

 to-day, prolonged backward into the deep past." He con- 

 tended 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 so uniform as 

 was claimed by the later school. While a given amount of 

 energy must evidently be expended, he reasoned, to produce a 

 given effect, yet the expenditure of this energy might be 

 extended over a very long time, or crowded into a comparatively 

 short one; and his observations showed him that at certain 

 periods in geological history, the rate of change was accelerated 

 to such a degree that the effect upon life produced was some- 

 what catastrophic in its nature. 



Of his great work upon systematic geology, the larger part 

 — that which outlines the geological history of the Cordilleran 

 System — stands as firmly to-day as it did when written, as a 

 correct and authoritative exposition. In view of the circum- 

 stances under which the field work was orginally done, its 

 essential correctness, even in matters of minor detail, is con- 

 sidered surprising by those who have since had occasion to 

 make detailed studies of portions of the area covered. 



In the more theoretical sections, while he necessarily did not 

 take into account the great number of new facts which have 



