NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES. 



tended discussion, was afterwards confirmed by Lord Kelvin 

 himself. (Smithsonian Keport, 1897, p. 345.) 



His further investigations along the same general lines on the 

 fundamental principles of upheaval and subsidence were in an 

 advanced stage of completion when they were cut off by his 

 untimely death. 



It is practically impossible to adequately characterize King's 

 literary work, for the greater part of what he did was never pub- 

 lished, and very likely never even written. It was his habit to 

 work out in his head any subject which interested him, even 

 down to its minutest details, before putting a pen to paper ; once 

 this was accomplished to his satisfaction, he wrote with such 

 ease and rapidity that the words actually flowed from his pen. 

 Probably one reason that he did not write more was that his own 

 literary taste was so refined and exacting that he was never 

 thoroughly satisfied with his own conceptions. In his scientific 

 writing, there was generally some imperious necessity that made 

 it urgent upon him to give his results to the public in spite of 

 the imperfections he might still see in them, but in literature 

 such necessity rarely appeared. What he did publish he himself 

 held in comparatively light esteem, but in the opinion of the 

 best literary writers of the clay, with most of whom he was on 

 terms of friendly and intimate intercourse, his writings, and even 

 more his affluent and delightful talks, disclosed a literary quality 

 that might have given him a foremost place among American 

 men of letters. 



His one literary book, "Mountaineering in the Sierra Ne- 

 vada," went through more editions in England than in this coun- 

 try, and was very generally regarded there as far the best book 

 of its kind that had ever been written. Of it Edward Gary, one 

 of our most discriminating literary critics, has said : 



"There is in these pages a vital harmony between the subject- 

 matter and the form. It cannot be analyzed; much less can it 

 be described or accounted for; least of all can it be resisted. It 

 stimulates and energizes, while it charms the mind. It gives, 

 in its own way and in its field, an intelligent reaction akin to 

 that given by certain passages of Shakespeare in which he ex- 

 plores the depths of human consciousness, and every inflection, 



