12 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. V. No. 105- 



poraneous witli the uplift of the Coast 

 Ranges and with the diorite or greenstone 

 intrusions. His report was submitted in 

 1857. 



1854-5. Dr. Thomas Antisell was geolo- 

 gist to Lieutenant Parke's expedition from 

 San Francisco to Los Angeles through the 

 Coast Ranges in 1854, and from the Pimas 

 villages in Arizona, along the 32d parallel 

 to the Organ Mountains, in New Mexico, 

 in 1855. He considers the age of the Coast 

 Ranges as post-Miocene, and notes the oc- 

 currence of bituminous deposits in southern 

 California. He was influenced in his views 

 on mountain ranges by Elie de Beaumont's 

 theory of mountain uplift along the great 

 circles, and endeavored to trace his systems 

 in the West. He thus drew attention to 

 the parallelism of the ridges in the great 

 mountain ranges ; the northwest trend in 

 the Coast Ranges, the Sierra Nevada and 

 the Arizona ranges, and the north and 

 south trends in eastern New Mexico. He 

 published colored sketch maps of sections 

 of country passed through and indicated 

 Carboniferous, Devonian and later rocks, 

 but it appears that the only fossils he 

 brought in were of Tertiary forms, and 

 that his opinions as to age were based on 

 the statements of other geologists and on 

 lithological correspondence, and can be 

 considered only as more or less well founded 

 surmises. 



1855. Dr. Newberry, as geologist of 

 Williamson and Abbott's expedition from 

 San Francisco to the Columbia River in the 

 summer of 1855, noted the occurrence of 

 Carboniferous and Cretaceous rocks in 

 northern California, as evidenced by fos- 

 sils collected by Dr. Trask, and that the 

 Oregon coals of Coos Bay, Bellingham Bay 

 and Vancouver Bay, probably of Tertiary 

 (Miocene) age, rest on Cretaceous rocks, 

 thus resembling the coals of the upper 

 Missouri. He noted the existence of an- 

 cient glaciers at various points along the 



mountains, but gave no hints of active 

 ones. He regarded the Sierras as of earlier 

 upheaval than the Coast Ranges. 



The contributions to the geology of the 

 West in the period from 1855 to the Civil 

 War had best be noted, not in strict chrono- 

 logical order, but geographically, taking 

 first the southern region, next the interior, 

 and finally the geology of the Great Plains. 



1855-6. On the expedition to fix the 

 boundary between Mexico and the United 

 States under the treaty of 1854, which was 

 conducted by Maj. W. H. Emory, Dr. C. C^ 

 Parry was geologist and botanist, and 

 Arthur Schott, assistant geological observer^ 



In Maj. Emory's quarto report, first vol- 

 ume, are geological sketches of the country 

 by Parry and Schott, with description of 

 fossils by Hall and Conrad, and a general 

 discussion of the geology of the region by 

 James Hall. The report also contains a col- 

 ored geological map of the Mississippi Val- 

 ley and country to the west, which is the 

 earliest colored geological map of the 

 country west of the Mississippi published by 

 the government. 



The fossils described are mostly Tertiary 

 and Cretaceous, and come in great measure 

 from Texas. Upper Carboniferous lime- 

 stones were identified at various points, and 

 the presence of Silurian is suggested by 

 Hall from a single fossil whose locality ia 

 not given. Hall discusses Marcou's section 

 in northern Texas and New Mexico, and 

 comes to the conclusion that the existence of 

 any Mesozoic rocks in this region below the 

 No. 1 Cretaceous, as determined by himself 

 and Meek and Hayden, is not confirmed. 

 The geological map prepared by him and 

 Lesley is mainly interesting now as rep- 

 resenting the blanks in the then geologi- 

 cal knowledge of the interior of the Rocky 

 Mountains. On the Great Plains his No. 1 

 Cretaceous included all that is now known 

 as Trias, Jurassic and Lower Cretaceous, 

 and was succeeded to the north by Upper 



