116 TTT JOURNAL VOR NGHOL OGM. 
The Geomorphogeny of the Coast of Northern California. By 
ANDREW C. Lawson. (Bulletin Geological Department of 
the University of California, Vol. I., No. 8, November, 
1894). 
This paper gives the results of Professor Lawson’s study of the 
coast north of San Francisco. It is a continuation of the study south 
of that point as published in No. 4 of the above publication. The 
topography of the northern coast of California is that of a dissected 
table-land sloping from an altitude of 1600 feet on the coast to 2100 
feet farther east. In the vicinity of Eel River this plain truncates the 
edges of a sharp syncline of Pliocene beds, having a thickness of more 
than a mile. 
The axis of the syncline is normal to the coast. Of the 36 species 
represented by fossils only 14 are extinct, while 18 are not known in 
the Miocene. Along the coast are numerous well-developed ocean 
terraces at various levels up to the top of the table-land. The streams 
are more precipitous in their lower than in their middle courses. The 
Eel River, owing to the softness of the Pliocene beds—the Wild-Cat 
series—has a broad flood-plain in contrast to the gorges of the other 
streams formed in the hard Mesozoic sandstone. In the vicinity of | 
San Francisco the channels cutting across the lower terraces are sunken, 
giving a fjord-like character to the region and forming the Golden 
Gate and Bay of San Francisco. 
The history of the region described is read by the author as fol- 
lows: (1) The formation of a great coastal peneplain in Pliocene 
times accompanied by the accumulation of marine sediments. ‘To this 
period belongs the deposition of the Wild-Cat series which took place 
part passu with the sinking of that area. (2) The orogenic deformation 
of parts of this plain and folding of Pliocene beds without changing 
the general altitude of the peneplain. (3) The reduction of upturned 
Pliocene beds to baselevel and the limited extension of the peneplain 
between uplifted blocks of other areas. (4) The progressive uplift of 
this peneplain to an altitude of 1600 to 2100 feet, the adjacent moun- 
tains being influenced by the same elevation. The stages of this 
uplift were marked by the coastal terraces, but the halts were, in gen- 
eral, too short to produce stream terraces by side shifting. (5) The 
erosion of the uplifted peneplain to the present stage of late adoles- 
cence or early maturity. In this erosion, structure and relative hard- 
