THE OREGON 
FIDDLER’S BLUFF, 
On the southern 
bank of the Sno- 
homish river about 
three miles above 
Snohomish City, 
where the Seattle, 
Lake Shore & East- 
ern railway first 
strikes the river bot- 
tom on its way from 
Seattle, is located a 
most remarkabie physical formation, known as 
Fiddler’s bluff. 
does not differ materially from many of the other 
hills that separate so many of the fertile valleys 
reach a 
In appearance Ficdler’s  bluft 
of Western Washington. It does not 
height of more than two hundred feet above the 
level of the Snohomish river, and is but a spur 
from a great range o: hills or meraines thrown 
up by volcanic action and molded into shape by 
great moving glaciers that ground the surface 
of the country during the great ice age. This 
range of hills contains the leading coal veins of 
King county, and gradually increase in height 
untilthey join the main Cascade range, What 
is commonly known as Fiddlers’ bluff isa steep 
narrow ridge about a mile in length and covering 
not more than two hundred acres. A great 
bed of fossils is exposed along the front of the 
bluff by the undermining of the Snohomish 
river and extends for a quarter of a mile along 
the cut of the Seattle, Luke Shore & Eastern 
railroad and is known to cover an area of at 
least 25 or 30 acres. The fossiliferous strata 
vary from 10 to 20 feet in thickness, although 
tbe chalk formation is much thicker, 
On Fiddlers bluff, immediately below the 
soil of tne present period, is the formation of 
glacial gravel which, of course, contains no fos- 
sils, From there down as far as it has been 
penetrated ‘are beds of impure chalk and lime- 
stone with shale, lignite, slate, sandstone, etc., 
between them, However, the fossiliferous strata 
are broken up in many places by the presence 
of iron in oxidized form which has decomposed 
the fossilremains. As most of the marine fos- 
sils and chalk casts are of species of clams, 
NATURALIST. 
tdi. 
mussels, sea-eggs and the like, indications are 
that when they were deposited it must have 
been a comparatively jevel sea beach which 
was covered and uncovered constantly by the 
The present 
great bends and dips of the strata tell a story 
of considerable volcanic activity in that region 
since the formation of the strata, 
ebbing and flowing of the tide, 
Of the speci- 
mens found, those of clams, are by far the 
most numerous and best preserved. A speci- 
men of a fall grown clam is about an inch’ and 
a half in diameter and nearly round in form, 
They are a distinct species from any found on 
Puget Sound. However a species resembling 
them exis.s all along the Atlantic coast of the 
United States. ‘The mussels are different from 
any now on th.s coast, but will be found on the 
beaches around the Mediterranean. Among 
the marine formations are little balls of chalk, 
and if one of them is broken, one is apt to find 
outlined in the center, the form of a shrimp or 
perhaps some water insect. A little higher in 
the strata are numerous remains of insects and 
of vegetation. 
Among the insects, the remains of great ants, 
beetles, caterpillars and yarious worms seem to 
be the Leaves resembling 
those of the poplar have been found, and twigs 
and cones from sequoia trees, more like the 
lig trees of California than Washington cedars, 
are not rare, The coarse grains of some of the 
specimens of petrified wood as well as the great 
most numerous, 
size of some of the insects seems to indicate 
that at least a sub-tropical climate existed in 
‘this country during the time of the formation of 
the Fiddlers bluff strata. 
The United States geological survey has not 
yet extended its researches to this region, but 
Professor J. S. Diller of that department, upon 
the request of a local geological student, visited 
the bluff and collected some specimens, and de- 
clared that those beds contained the most re- 
markable variety of fossils that he had yet seen, 
and thought that they would enable him by 
comparison to determine the age of the Puget 
Sound basin, 
In the opinion of the local geologists the Fid- 
dlers bluff formation belongs to the middle Ter- 
