542 HISTORY OF PAvSADENA. 



The matter of geological age is determined by the fossils found in these 

 coast mountains, as compared with those of other mountains or plains that 

 belong to lower or earlier geological ages. Official observers have reported 

 such finds in kindred mountain sections both westward and eastward ; and 

 I have myself gathered specimens from Shell Rock creek, near Goleta in 

 Santa Barbara county. Arthur B. Stevens of Pasadena, has gathered fossil 

 shells from his father's plow-land at Chatsworth Park, twenty-five or thirty 

 miles northwest from Pasadena. Prof. McClatchie of Throop Polytechnic 

 Institute has found fossil shells in the Puente hills ; and Hon. Delos Arnold 

 of Pasadena, during the winter of 1 880-81, first discovered fossil fish in the 

 chalklike hills about four miles south of the city. He has also gathered 

 fossil shells of over two hundred extinct species of mollusks from the rocks 

 of Deadman's Island and other points about San Pedro Bay, while there 

 are not to exceed seventy-five species now living in the same vicinity.* 

 Some of the species that are found here in the fossil state only, are found 

 still living in the iceberg waters of Alaska, amid the rigors of a lingering 

 glacial period. And this fact suggests a time when the climate of Los 

 Angeles county was perhaps as frosty and frigid as that of Alaska is now. 

 Such are the far-reaching lessons of geology." 



Although no fossils have yet been found, distinctly within Pasadena- 

 land, the reader will, nevertheless, wish to know what remains of extinct 

 animals have been found in other sections, of same species as roamed here 

 during the same geological periods. [See Prof. Holder's "Ancient Animals," 

 etc., Chapter 31.] In the annual address of the President of the Los Angeles 

 County Historical Society, 1888-89, he says : 



"We have verified and recorded the discovery of a tusk of large pro- 

 portions, the fragment found being six feet long and six inches in diameter, 

 in a well at a depth of thirty feet, some twenty miles east of this city ; also 

 of the skeleton of a whale on the summit of the Santa Monica mountains." 



The Lewis "History Los Angeles County, " 1889, says : " Inasphaltum 

 or tar springs west of Los Angeles [nine miles] a tooth of the saber-toothed 

 tiger was found." And remains of the mastodon have been found at 

 Tejunga, Los Angeles, Puente, and San Juan-by-the-Sea, at depths varying 

 from five to twenty feet below the surface of the ground. 



In Prof. Whitney's "Geology of California : Vol. I," there are many 

 instances given of remains of extinct animals being found w^hich existed in 

 California at the same time with the primitive Man, whose remains were 

 found and amply verified, under the great lava capping of Table Mountain. 

 I hold that the primitive race of Man whose stone implements were found 



♦When Prof. E T. Pierce, who served five years as principal of the schools of Pasadena, was priuci- 

 pal of the State Normal School at Chiro. the Chico Daily Enictprise of Nov. 21, iSgi, contained this item : 

 "This morning Principal Pierce received the following letter from Senator Delos Arnold of Pasadena : 

 ' I have this day shipped to your institution two boxes of specimens. One box conta ning about eighty 

 species and varieties of Quaternary fossils (Post pliocene), from San Pedro. They have all been iden- 

 tified, and I believe are nearly correct in their names. I thought this collection of recent fossils, start- 

 ing as it does, at the top of the great and wonderful geological column, twenty miles or more in height, 

 wculd ,=timulate the inquirer to dig down towards its base, quite as much as one starting from the base 

 and necessitating workuig up.' " About Nov. 10 the same year Mr. Arnold presented the Throop Poly- 

 technic Institute with 150 varieties of quaternarv and pliocene fossils found in I.os Angeles county. And 

 this was a duplicate of a similar collection which he had sent to the National Museum [Smithsonian 

 Institute] at Washington. [See "Conchology Collection," page 212.] 



