He holds a card that shows various crystalline forms of minerals. Below him are snow-capped mountain peaks wreathed in clouds. Behind him are sharply folded layers of rock showing stratification. A drilling rig which extracts oil trapped within rock layers is at extreme left. Oil production was important in Southern California in Ballin's time, as well as today.
Huge crystals are in the background, below rolling ocean waves.
At the center a biologist, flanked by a skull on a book and box of slides, peers into a microscope. Below him are the embryo of a chicken on the sixth day, and a crab. The crab is holding a cactus in bloom. Beside the crab are spores as seen through the microscope. The robbed figure at right symbolizes paleontology, the branch of geology that deals with life in past geological ages.