GEOLOGICAL AND KATUKAI. HISTORY HUKVEYS. 89 



and promoters, whose efforts at selling stock were thereby checked. 

 " Petroleum is what killed us. By the word ' petroleum ' understand 

 the desire to sell w^orthless property for large sums and the impolicy 

 of having anybody aroinid to interefere with the little game," he 

 wrote. 



All those chains or ranges of mountains in California which had 

 been uplifted since the deposition of the Cretaceous were considered 

 to belong to the Coast Ranges; those which vYere elevated before the 

 Cretaceous, to the Sierra N'evada. The slates of the western slope in 

 Mariposa Count\^ v;ere identified as of Jurassic age, and the calcare- 

 <nis slates of Plumas County as Triassic. The limestones in tlic Gray 

 Mountains had been previously referred by Trask to the Carbonifer- 

 ous, and to tliis Whitney agreed. The peculiar dome-shaped con- 

 centric structure of the granite in the Sierras was dwelt upon with 

 considerable detail, and the curved structure of the sheets thouglit to 

 have been produced by the contraction of the material while cooling 

 or solidifying. The Yosemite Valley itself Whitney thought to be 

 due to a differential movement, the half dome seeming beyond a doubt 

 to have been split asunder in the middle, and one-half to have gone 

 down in what he called "the wreck of matter and the crush of 

 worlds." In otlier woi'ds, he considered tlie Aallej,' as due to the 

 downward drop of an enormous fault block. 



The first volume of the palentological reports appeared in 1864. 

 This comprised 243 pages, with 32 full-page plates of fossils. Con- 

 cerning the work thus far done, Whitney Avrote, in Iho Ar.i.erican 

 Journal of Science for November, 1864: 



Perhaps the most striking result of the survey is the proof we have obtained 

 of the immense development of rocks, equivalent in age to the upper Trias of 

 the Alps, and paleontologically closely allied to the limestones of Hallstndt and 

 Aussee, and the St. Cassirai beds, that extremely important and highly fossi}- 

 Iferous division of the Alpine Trias. * * * Enough fossils have been found 

 to justify the assertion that the sedimentary portion of the great metalliferous 

 belt of the Pacific coast of North America is chiefly made u}) of rocks of Jurassic 

 and Triassic age. While we are fully justified in saying that a large portion of 

 the auriferous rocks of California consist of metamorphic Triassic and Juras^sic 

 strata, we have not a particle of evidence to uphold the theory * * * that 

 all or even a portion are older than the Carboniferous. » « ♦ We are able 

 to state * * * that tliis metal (gold) occurs in no inconsiderable quantity 

 in metamorj^hlc rocks belonging as hitdi up in series as tlie Cretaceous. 



The second volume of the paleontological reports, published in 

 1869, comprised 299 pages with 36 full-page plates, and was given up 

 wholly to descriptions of Tertiary and Cretaceous fossils. In the 

 introductory note the statement is reiterated concerning the age of 

 the gold-bearing rocks, and the absence of rocks older than Carbonif - 



