2 J. C. BRANNER 
Professor Snyder, of the Department of Zodlogy, Stanford Uni- 
versity. ? 
In accounting for the distribution of these fishes, the theory of 
Dr. Le Conte seemed to meet the requirements of the case fairly 
well. To understand the principal peculiarities of this fauna, it 
was only necessary to imagine the Golden Gate closed and the Sacra- 
mento Valley drainage flowing down the Santa Clara Valley and 
emptying into the Bay of Monterey. The Bay of San Francisco 
would thus be a body of fresh water, and the fishes of the upper Sacra- 
mento could ascend streams flowing into the fresh-water bay and into 
the Santa Clara Valley. There is some difficulty in comprehending 
how the fishes from the Pajaro, through which the waters are sup- 
posed to have entered the Bay of Monterey, could get into the Salinas 
a few miles to the south, and into the San Lorenzo which enters the 
bay twelve miles or more northwest of the mouth of the Pajaro; but 
no stress need be laid just now on the relation of the Pajaro to other 
streams flowing into the Bay of Monterey. Recent study of the 
geology southwest of San José has raised serious doubt regarding 
Dr. Le Conte’s conclusions and necessitated a closer scrutiny of the 
facts offered in their support. 
The first two reasons brought forward by him—namely, (1) that 
there is no submerged channel in front of the Golden Gate, and (2) 
that there is such a channel in the Bay of Monterey—are sufficiently 
warranted by the hydrographic charts. ‘The Monterey channel is 
clearly exhibited in one of the charts accompanying Professor George 
Davidson’s ‘Submerged Valleys of the Coast of California,’ published 
in the Proceedings of the California Academy oj Sciences, Third Series, 
Vol. I, pp. 73-101, 5. F. 1897. The question is here raised, however, 
regarding the assumed height of the watershed in the Santa Clara 
Valley between the drainage into the Bay of San Francisco and the 
drainage into the Bay of Monterey. Dr. Le Conte says it is less than 
a hundred feet above sea-level, and it is apparently assumed that with 
the Golden Gate closed the drainage of the great valley would rise 
and flow over this notch and pass down the Pajaro River to the Bay 
ot Monterey. 
2 J. O. Snyder, ‘Notes on the Fishes of the Streams Flowing into San Francisco 
Bay, Cal.,”” Report of the U. S. Fish Commission, 1904. 
