636 CALIFORNIA ACADEMY OF SCIENCES [Proc 4th Ser. 



Department of Invertebrate Paleontology 



On January 1, 1921, the Curator of the Department left San Francisco 

 for Washington, D. C, at the request of the United States Commis- 

 sioner of Fisheries, for the purpose of attending a conference on Alaska 

 fur seals on January 10. Among other things accomplished, the persons 

 present at the conference expressed entire satisfaction with the methods 

 of fur seal computation which have been developed and applied by the 

 writer from 1915 to 1920. 



On the return trip from Washington a representative series of 

 Cretaceous fossils was obtained at Austin, Texas ; also a considerable 

 collection of land shells was made there but at the end of the year they 

 remained unsorted and uncatalogued. 



A considerable amount of field work was done on this trip in various 

 portions of Imperial Valley, California, particularly in the vicinity of 

 Carrizo Creek. Collections then made were sufficient to warrant the 

 completion of a report on the fossils of the region and the paper is 

 now ready for the press except for the checking of a few stratigraphical 

 observations in the region. The working up of the large amount of 

 material secured on that trip occupied the greater part of the curator's 

 time in the laboratory during the year, but it is felt that the results 

 obtained have more than compensated for the time expended. During 

 this study use was made of practically all collections from the region 

 which have been assembled. These have been identified and returned 

 to their respective owners with the exception of a small number of 

 specimens which belong to the University of California; they were re- 

 tained for a brief period for photographic purposes. 



Other field work undertaken by the curator during the year consisted 

 of two short trips to the Sierra Nevada Mountains and one to Point 

 Reyes. On all of these the work was done in cooperation with Dr. 

 Emmet Rixford of San Francisco, and primarily for the purpose of 

 adding to the knowledge of the distribution of California mollusks. 



The month of May and the first half of June were spent in the field 

 in Los Angeles and Ventura counties, where the curator was ably as- 

 sisted by Marcus A. Hanna of the University of California. The 

 collections of fossils made there fill important gaps in the Academy's 

 series and provide an abundance of well preserved specimens for ex- 

 change. At the end of the year this material had not been catalogued. 

 The trip furnished an opportunity to secure good series of land shells at 

 many places, and some birds, eggs, reptiles and amphibians were col- 

 lected. 



The department was represented on the Gulf of California Expedition 

 by Dr. Fred Baker of Point Loma, California, and the collections in 

 conchology and paleontology made by him and his associates are very 

 large and valuable. They filled 28 packing cases and two tanks. The 

 shipment arrived in San Francisco too late to be unpacked before the 

 end of the year; therefore it is impossible to venture an estimate of the 

 number of species or specimens collected. 



