KING, CLARENCE (1842-1901), American geologist, was born at Newport (R.I.), on Jan. 6, 1842. He was known as an organizer and for ten years chief of the U.S. geological explora tion of the 4oth parallel, which laid the foundation of a systematic survey of the country. In 1862 he graduated from the Sheffield Scientific school of Yale. In the following years he was a student of glaciology under Agassiz; undertook a trip across the conti nent on horse-back; and accepted a position as volunteer geologist on the California geological survey. The high mountain mass of the southern Sierras was discovered by him at this time, and he explored the desert regions of southern California and Arizona.
King persuaded the Government to make a thorough geological survey of California in order to develop its mineral resources, and accomplished the famous exploration of the 4oth parallel against almost insuperable difficulties. The final summary of this
work, a masterpiece of writing, was published in 1878, under the title Systematic Geology. He was instrumental in organizing the surveys of the country into one U.S. geological survey in 1879, of which he was made the first director, but retired in order to devote himself to some of the deeper problems of geology. He also gave much of his time to his profession as a mining engineer and skilled adviser in mining suits, and added to his literary reputation by his occasional articles and his book Mountaineering in the Sierra Nevada. His exposure of a great diamond fraud in 1872, which might otherwise have equalled the "Mississippi Bubble" as a financial disaster, gave him much prominence in the public eye. He died at Phoenix, Arizona, Dec. 24, 1901.