forced its way, giving the place somewhat the resemblance of 

 a boiling pot. Today the visitor stands with wonder on the 

 bank of this little sheet of water, as he listens to the constant 

 bursting of gas bubbles, and witnesses the rings and ripples 

 agitating its surface. The two large halftones in Professor 

 Gilbert's article give a very fair view of this lake, and the 

 effects of the gas issuing from its surface. 



At places, in the old excavations, quantities so great, of 

 bones were encountered that other points were selected for the 

 work. The uninformed of those days, believed these bones to 

 be the remains of cattle, horses and sheep which had grazed in 

 the vicinity, and the place became known as La Huesamenta, 

 or as we would say, "the bone yard.' 



In the year 1901, Professor W. W. Orcutt, now the man- 

 ager of the Geological and Land Department of the Union Oil 

 Company of California, while examining the geological condi- 

 tions relating to the occurrence of petroleum on La Brea 

 Rancho, found in the asphaltnm beds a quantity of bones, some 

 of which were of ordinary appearance, but others were so mas- 

 sive that they excited his curiosity. lie made only a cursory 

 examination at that time, but in the summer of 1902 he took 

 from the brea bed a Saber of the Saber-tooth Tiger, and soon 

 after he excavated the skull of a young Saber-tooth Tiger, the 

 skull of a Wolf, teeth of the wild horse, fragmentary bones 

 of Rodents, the bones or scutes from the skin of the gigantic 

 Ground Sloth, water-worn pieces of cedar wood and several 

 other fossils of a miscellaneous character. 



These he kept in his office and exhibited to his colleagues 

 and personal friends. In 1907 Mr. F. M. Anderson. Geologist 

 of the Southern Pacific Company, in an examination of this 

 collection, was so impressed with the importance of Professor 

 Orcutt 's discovery, that he informed Professor J. C. Merriam 

 of the University of California, of the existence of these 

 deposits. Professor Merriam immediately entered into corre- 

 spondence with Professor Orcutt. which resulted in several 

 visits to these Brea beds, and, securing permission from Mrs. 

 Hancock, now Mrs. Ross, in the winter of 1907-8, with his 

 assistants, he excavated several rare specimens which are now 

 in the Zoological rooms of the State University at Berkeley; 

 and the first public announcement of the discovery of this, 

 the greatest deposit of its kind the world has known, was given 

 in Professor Merriam 's paper, published in the Sunset Maga- 

 zine of October, 1908. 



The large appropriations made by the Los Angeles City 

 Council and the County Board of Supervisors, and the results 

 achieved in these excavations speak louder than anything we 



