CLARENCE KING. 



to the time of her death, at the age of 95, in 1893. Her son, 

 Bobbins Little, was for many years librarian of the Astor Library, 

 New York. 



The immediate ancestors of the name were pioneer merchants 

 of the East India and China trade in the first half of the last 

 century. His grandfather, Samuel Vernon King, moved from 

 Newport to ISTew York, and in 1803 was senior partner in the 

 commercial house of King & Talbot. His four sons, Charles, 

 James, Frederick, and David, successively replaced him in the 

 firm, which became known as Talbot, Olyphant & Company, and 

 later as King & Company. Three of these four brothers died in 

 the far East ; the fourth fell in the first year of the Civil War. 



James, the father of Clarence, though induced by family in- 

 fluence to follow the calling of a merchant, had a natural leaning 

 toward scientific studies. He married Florence Little at the age 

 of 21, but was obliged to leave his young wife before the birth of 

 their first child in order to take the place of his elder brother in 

 the house in China. He died suddenly at Amoy, China, in 1848, 

 leaving as a legacy to his wife and only child his interest in the 

 business of the China firm. 



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

 education of her son, learning with an inherited facility both 

 classical and modern languages that she might teach them in turn 

 to him, and cultivating the taste for natural science, an inherited 

 quality, which early showed itself in the child. While living at 

 Pomfret, Connecticut, whither she had gone that he might have 

 the benefit of Dr. Park's excellent school for boys, the young 

 Clarence, then only seven years old, came to his mother one day 

 in January, when the ground was covered with frozen snow, 

 and asked if she could go a little way with him to see something. 

 The little way proved to be about a mile and the something 

 a remarkably distinct fossil fern in a stone wall, and the boy 

 wished his mother to explain to him how it came there. Books 

 on geology were consulted, and from that time on, she writes,^ 

 "my rooms became a veritable museum, where all kinds of speci- 

 mens were studied with enthusiasm." In his later school-boy 

 days, which were principally spent in the endowed high school 

 at Hartford, Connecticut, while in the summer vacation trips 

 in the Green Mountains were devoted to camping out among 



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