GEOLOGY. 335 



of the Indian dialect with him, he learned that the bones were of com- 

 paratively recent deposit there. The cave is about thirty-five feet deep, is 

 irregular in form, and is not more than twenty feet in extent in different 

 directions. The bones have been all taken away, and the stalagmites also 

 have been broken aiid removed, so that there is little now to interest one 

 in exploring it. In this vicincity is also another cave, with an entrance 

 rather small, and about one hundred feet deep, from which have been 

 taken some very large and finely- crystallized stalactites. These are all in. 

 limestone districts of country, and are cavities hollowed out in this easily 

 soluble material by the long-continued action of water. Last summer I 

 visited a cave in the vicinity of Columbia, formed by the forcible breaking 

 up of the primitive or metanaorphic rock by subterranean violence. The 

 hill was rounded over this cave, and the rock broken in various directions, 

 and huge masses were tilted and lodged against each other, so that large 

 caverns existed under the hill, and were connected with each other by low 

 or narrow passages. The whole had been often filled with water, and 

 when a vast reservoir, for mining purposes, immediately over its mouth, 

 suddenly sunk away into it last summer, it was observed that the water 

 obtained an outlet some six miles farther south, from the side of another 

 hill. This circumstance shows a connection of the fractures, and indi- 

 cates a simultaneous action of force by which some of these hills were 

 elevated. I observed no teeth nor other vestiges of animal remains in 

 that cave, though it had been asserted by the first explorers that the teeth 

 of some large animal had been found there. 



The remains of ancient quadrupeds, however, if not found there, are 

 frequently found in the fiats of the neighboring regions of country, where 

 the miners are at work in procuring gold. The fire of Columbia burned 

 up many specimens of remarkable organic remains, which had been col- 

 lected by miners while excavating for gold among the drift of the val- 

 leys. Texas Flat seems peculiarly distinguished for these remains. I 

 have now a piece of bone temporarily in my possession, probably a frag- 

 ment of the lower jaw-bone of a mastodon, from that locality and a per- 

 son at Texas Flat assured one of our party that a tusk, nine feet in length, 

 and twenty-seven inches in circumference, had been lying for a twelve- 

 month on the ground near his cabin, but had been recently removed by 

 some one who felt an interest in collecting such curiosities. 



Fossils abound in the drift of all parts of California, from the peninsula 

 on which stands San Francisco, and even in the heart of that city, to the 

 flanks and summits of the Sierra Nevada. 



ON METEORIC STONES AND THEIR ORIGIN. 



At the "Washington meeting of the American Scientific Association, Dr. 

 J. Laurence Smith presented a communication on the above subject. 



He exhibited several small meteorites, and some large ones. A frag- 

 ment of one in his possession he showed, of which the w r hole body weighed 



