ARNOLD — THE PALEONTOLOGY AND STRATIGRAPHY OF SAN PEDRO. 53 



few feet above. The large shells in the strata are poorly preserved, but the smaller 

 fossils, especially the gastropods, are abundant and well preserved. 



The fauna of the beds west of the bath-house is similar to that of the lower 

 San Pedro series (lower Pleistocene) of Deadman Island, and these Santa Barbara 

 beds are probably contemporaneous with the lower San Pedro deposit of Deadman 

 Island. Several nearly perfect tests of Strongylocentrotus pu7yuratus were found in 

 the bath-house strata, the first tests of this species that have been recorded from the 

 Pleistocene. Echinarachnius excentricus. was also found in the same bed. The strati- 

 graphic relation between the Packard's Hill and bath-house beach fossiliferous deposits 

 was not obtained, but the former are probably the older strata, although both may 

 belong to the same series and be nearly contemporaneous. 



Lithologically the two beds are somewhat similar, but faunally they differ con- 

 siderably. The absence of Pecten hellus, Terehralalia hempMlli, Laqueiis jeffreysi and 

 Pecten opuntia from the bath-house beach strata; and the absence of the two species 

 of echinoderms and many species of gastropods from the Packard's Hill beds, are the 

 noticeable differences between the two faunas. 



Whitney mentions the following loaalities, besides those already cited, where 

 Pleistocene deposits were found by the State Survey: At Hill's Ranch,' about six 

 miles west of Santa Barbara, "the bituminous slate is covered unconformably, as at 

 Santa Barbara, by a heavy deposit of post-Pliocene age, which here attains a thickness 

 of from eighty to one hundred feet. The bituminous slates, which are highly con- 

 torted and turned upon edge, lie nearly on a level with the ocean; and on their 

 edges rests a body of soft, arenaceous, and loose gravelly materials, sometimes very 

 slightly consolidated, and in which are long fissures filled with asphaltum." On the 

 southwestern face- of Santa Barbara Island is a raised beach thirty feet above tide 

 level, containing marine shells, which Whitney thinks is the same formation as that 

 found at Santa Barbara. Near the Santa Maria River the hills of Miocene shale are 

 capi^ed with horizontal post-Pliocene deposits.^ 



Dr. Stephen Bowers* describes the Pleistocene of Santa Rosa Island from 

 notes taken by Dr. L. G. Yates: "On the north side of the island, about ten miles 

 from the wharf, and near the mouth of Soledad Canyon, there is a fine exposure of 

 strata consisting of about ninety feet of post-Pliocene deposits, containing fossil bones 

 of vertebrates and at one place fossil Physas, at a depth of some seventy-five feet below 

 the surface. This deposit is horizontal and overlies strata of older rocks, probably 

 Pliocene, which dip 13° northeast, and contain Pectens and Turbinelias in abundance." 



Judging by the fauna of the Pleistocene deposits on Santa Rosa Island, they 

 are probably of fresh-water origin. An elephant's tooth and other elephant remains 

 are reported by DalP as having been found by W. G. Blunt and Voy on Santa 

 Rosa Island. 



Ventura. — The most striking thing in relation to the geology of the vicinity of 



1 Geological Survey of California. By J. D. Whitney, Slate Geologist. Geology, 1865, Vol. I, p. 132. 



- Op. at., p. 183. 



3 Op. cit., p. 137. 



* Santa Rosa Island. By Rev. Stephen Bowers. Smithsonian Report, 1877, p. 317. 



« Correlation Papers. Neocene. By W. H. Dall and G. D. Harris. Bull O. S. Geol. Snr., No. 84, 1892, p. 217. 



