8 Wesi A77icrican Scientist. 



book which may be widely read by die youth of our land. The 

 active hours of the day spent in healing the sick and relieving 

 pain; the leisure moments devoted to earnest, successful study of 

 the beautiful and instructive objects of nature, and in recording 

 these observations for the use of others : well may his modest 

 words and his noble example bid us melt the yellow dust of our 

 leisure moments into bars of solid gold. Josiah Keep. 



SOMETHING NEW. 



A long time ago, we may call it millions or we may call it 

 thousands, of years ago, a little colony of oyster-like mollusks be- 

 gan its existence beneath the ocean wave not far from where now 

 stands the little town of Encenada de Todos Santos — the capital 

 ot the Mexican territory of Lower California. Another colony 

 located in a part of the county of Mendocino, California; and 

 doubtless many a colony was founded at about the same period of 

 the world's history, along our shores, whose unwritten archives 

 are still hidden from our view. However, Mother Earth, to whom 

 we have to look for all our records of prehistoric life and times, 

 has revealed htr scanty records of these two settlements, made by 

 the same race of bivalves, separated by more than five hundred 

 miles of territory. 



In January, 1883, a pleasure party of naturalists visited the 

 shore of Todos Santos bay, a hundred miles south of San Diego 

 by wagon road. Visiting the hut of a Canadian who possessed 

 one leg and a reputation for fishing, in search of ichthyological 

 treasures tor one of the party, a number of curious water- worn 

 boulders were found lying on the shingly beach. A couple of 

 these, which seemed to most resemble shells, were carried to the 

 wagon, and a year later found their way to the National Museum 

 at Washington, 



In 1885, H. C. Orcutt and the writer again visited this little 

 cove on the bay side of what is locally known as Punt-i Banda. 

 The Canadian was dead, but the shingly beach remained, and 

 strewn along with volcanic rocks and recent shells were found 

 others of this interesting fossil and forthwith a successful search 

 for a bed of them was made. 



The deposit was found exposed for only a few hundred feet, 

 just above high water, large portions having been undermined by 

 the waves in places and broken away. The strata was only four 

 to six feet in thickness and was frequently broken, terminating 

 abruptly and reappearing again, but sloping differently and show- 

 ing an evident upheaval and dislocation at some period in its 

 history. A strata of clay was found underlying the formadon and 

 cobblestones above, tertiary deposits overlying the whole, forming 



