4 FOSSIL FISHES OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA 



examples of ETRINGUS SCINTILLANS and scales of GANOLYTES CAMEO. 

 The type example of RHOMURUS FULCRATUS is from these deposits. 



4. Walnut, in Puente Valley (not Puente), a locality north of the 

 Sierra Santa Monica. 



It is a matter of doubt whether these deposits which I call pro- 

 visionally Soledad belong to the lower Miocene or to the Oligocene period. 

 The following extracts from a letter of Dr. Frank M. Anderson, dated 

 Berkeley, July 13, give the latest available information: 



I have endeavored to ascertain from some one some satisfactory information 

 as to the locality at the head of Brown's Canyon, said to be four miles north of 

 the Soldiers Home. I note also what you have said regarding the probable age 

 of the strata from which the specimens of this locality came. Recently I drove up 

 this canon as far as I could, and as far as it seemed necessary to go, for the 

 necessary information regarding the possible occurrence of Tertiary or Cretaceous 

 strata in this part of the Santa Monica range. I also drove up the next canon 

 west of Brown's Canon. 



The formations in the central and higher parts of the Santa Monica range 

 here, and to the eastward, are all of Pre-Cretaceous age, and include some 

 igneous rocks. The stratified rocks are slates and old semicrystalline sandstones, 

 and not such as would likely contain fish remains, or any other organic forms. 



If there are any Tertiary strata near the head of the Brown's canon they 

 might be on the north slope of the range, and therefore not in the canon itself, 

 or there might possibly be a very small remnant of the Tertiary strata left lying 

 on the older rocks, but this s-eems to me to be unlikely. If such remnant is there, 

 or if Tertiary strata are conceded to exist there at all, they are much more probably 

 of lower Miocene, than of Oligocene age, since the former are found on both flanks 

 of the range, while the latter have not been found, as far as known, about this range 

 at all. <*. ; 



The locality mentioned near Olinda is quite accessible, but in this case the 

 strata are all represented to be, and I believe are of Miocene age, and Middle, 

 or lower Miocene. I am quite familiar with the locality and with the formations 

 there, and have seen no very good reason to regard any strata very near Olinda 

 as Oligocene, though Oligocene sandstone and shale, or such strata that may be 

 of that age do occur about two miles east of Olinda. 



I have little or no information regarding the occurrence of Tertiary strata 

 in the Soledad Pass. Sandstone, and perhaps shale do occur there, and they are 

 doubtless of Tertiary age, but I do not know their age more definitely. Oligocene 

 strata are well known on both sides of the Santa Clara Valley (of Ventura County), 

 and as the Soledad canon, and pass, are the axial continuation of the Santa Clara 

 Valley toward the east, there is nothing improbable in their supposed occurrence in 

 the Soledad Pass, though they have not been reported from there. 



I here enumerate the species known from the rocks of the group 

 I call Soledad. The main reason for thinking that these deposits are 

 older than the Miocene is that the whole fish fauna is distinct from that 

 of the Monterey series. The genera are all extinct and mainly of Eocene 

 type, while those from the overlying shales and diatomaceous deposits 



