

io The Stone Quarry. 



part of the Willamette valley. It will be 

 noticed that the surface of this specimen is 

 thickly strewn with those shell forms varying 

 in size from a hand breadth to the minutest 

 specks. These lie exposed on the surface or 

 "buried in the mass of the rock at different 

 depths, some so slightly held that the shell 

 material is easily displaced, others almost 

 buried from sight, still others only found by 

 making new fractures. Many of the bivalves 

 * are tightly closed as when alive, others spread 

 wide apart, and all these covered with sand 

 and mud just as one sees such forms along a 

 sea beach of to-day. 



And now of all these it may be truly said 

 that they are not strangers to the student of 

 to-day, but forms familiar to all who have 

 even a slight acquaintance with the ocean life 

 of our own times. As soon as one accepts 

 the conviction that this piece of rock is a 

 fragment of an ancient sea beach, then at once 

 follows the question, ^How far does this old 

 fossil beach extend?" One is compelled to 

 answer, "Thousands of miles, like our present 



