420 Lis fOURNATEY OR NGHOEO GN 
forms the larger part of the series wherever the writer has inves- 
tigated it. The sandstone strata are often thick-bedded, which 
fact, taken together with the distortion undergone makes it very 
difficult to determine the bedding in small outcrops. Shale or 
slate occurs in subordinate amount, as thin layers between the 
sandstone strata, or more rarely in thick beds as in some por- 
tions of the Santa Lucia Mountains and the northern Coast 
Ranges. 
Stratigraphic position—The Golden Gate series as previously 
defined underlies unconformably the lowest known Cretaceous 
and rests on the crystalline basement rocks. It seems, for rea- 
sons to be mentioned, that no great lapse of time, geologically 
speaking, separated the deposition of the beds belonging to this 
series from the lowest Knoxville beds, but on the contrary the 
time interval separating it from the crystalline basement is very 
great. At numerous points along the coast of Monterey county 
this Golden Gate series rests on the granite and crystalline 
schists. For a distance of three or four miles in the vicinity of 
Slate’s Springs it terminates below with a conglomerate which, 
on Hot Spring Creek, is 1000 feet thick. 
The question of the relation between the Golden Gate series 
and the Knoxville is the all-important one. As far south as the 
fortieth parallel Mr. Diller has proved the existence of a series 
older than the Knoxville and separated from it by a noncon- 
formity. Four miles east of Lower Lake the writer has observed 
an undoubted nonconformity between the Awce//a-bearing shales 
and the older series. About Clear Lake the Chico rests uncon- 
formably on upturned masses of sandstone, jasper, and slate. In 
the Cafion of. Capel Creek, Napa county, there are good evi- 
dences of a nonconformity between the Knoxville and an older 
series. In the Coast Range south of San Francisco the writer 
has observed the Chico at many points resting unconformably 
on a series of rocks lithologically very similar to that underlying 
the Knoxville farther north. The recent trip through the Santa 
Lucia Range resulted in the discovery of several distinct con- 
tacts between the Awcel/a-bearing Knoxville shales and an under- 
