Clarence King — Geologist 



In June, 1877, he delivered the ad- 

 dress at the thirty-first anniversary 

 of the Sheffield Scientific School on 

 " Catastrophism and the Evolution 

 of Environment." It was a protest 

 against the extreme uniformitarian- 

 ism of that day, based largely on 

 the geological history of the Cor- 

 dilleran System as developed during 

 the work of the Fortieth Parallel 

 Survey. This uniformitarianism he 

 characteristically described as " the 

 harmless undestructive rate (of geo- 

 logical change) of to-day, prolonged 

 backward into the deep past." He 

 contended 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 rea- 

 soned, to produce a given effect, yet 

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