THE ANIMAL EEMAINS OF THE GRAVEL SEMES. 



239 



gravely which was about two feet thick, stems of bushes and grass-roots, form- 

 ing bogs, all standing in the place where they grew, the stems of the bushes 

 being sometimes two or three feet high, although the tops were generally 

 gone. The grass is said to have been well preserved, and the form and out- 



lines of the whole thing unmistakable. 



In a hydraulic pit opened at Kentucky Flat, two or three miles southeast 

 of Mount Gregory, there is a stratum exposed which is very full of fossil 

 wood, a part of which is carbonized and a part petrified by iron pyrites. 

 The sticks are very numerous, and the texture of the wood is generally well 

 preserved. 



In Bear Hill, at Diamond Springs, fossil wood has been very plenty, and 

 is generally converted into semi-opal. 



x . 





Section IV. — The Animal Remains, not Human, of the Auriferous Gravel Series. 



The reasons which have been given in the preceding section for finding 

 the fossil plants of the gravel beds in a more or less fragmentary and imper- 

 fect condition apply with equal force to the animal remains which have been 

 imbedded in these deposits. The collecting of fossil bones has been, in some 



■ 



respects, an exceedingly unsatisfactory business. No locality has, as yet, — 

 so far as the writer has observed, — ever been discovered in the hydraulic 

 mining region, where animal remains seemed to occur in the position in 

 which they had been left at the time of the death of the individual. The 

 only entire skeletons which have been observed were found quite low down 

 in the foot-hills, where conditions were more favorable to their preservation 

 than was the case higher up among the gravelly beds. Still, a considerable 

 amount of material lias been obtained, and enough, with the aid of the 

 plants, to throw considerable light on the aire of the formations in which 

 they occur. The presence of the works of man and of human bones at 

 Various points, however, has made the geological relations of the strata in 

 question an object of very great interest, so that it becomes desirable to lay 

 before the reader 



i IS 



complete an account as possible of what has been 

 observed, and what has been learned from the miners themselves, in regard 

 to their discoveries. The testimony of uneducated men, not accustomed to 

 take into consideration all the conditions necessary for insuring accuracy of 

 observation, must, of course, be taken with caution. The statements of one 

 person must be weighed against those of another, and from the whole body 



