374 OLDER MESOZOIC FLORAS OF UNITED STATES. 
Jurassic and the Cretaceous that some of the most important movements of the 
Pacific coast have occurred. I have just dictated a letter to the Director requesting 
that, if possible, arrangements be made to have that field studied this summer by 
some paleobotanist. 
On April 19 Professor Fontaine again writes: 
I wish you would go out and collect from Mr. Brown’s localities. I was especially 
struck with his locality, ‘‘Railroad cut near whistling post, one-half mile north 
of Nichols,” etc. He got about 24 specimens from that place and nearly all of 
them were different species. Some of them seem to be new species and genera. 
The material seems to preserve the plants well. I am sure fine and interesting 
plants can be gotten there. 
Such was the condition of things at the beginning of the field season 
of 1899, and acting upon the suggestions of Professor Diller and Pro- 
fessor Fontaine I presented the matter to the Director on May 1, in 
the following form: : 
There is a small region in the vicinity of Riddles, including Buck Mountain, Olalla 
Creek, Cow Creek, etc., in which the strata are much disturbed, but which seems to 
be the key to the geology of that whole country. The geologists have not been able 
to work it out. There are few animal fossils, but an abundance of vegetable fossils; 
these latter are clear and fairly diagnostic, and seem to indicate two or three horizons 
extending down to the Jurassic. A large number of small collections have been 
made from this region at various times by different collectors, some of them ama- 
teurs, others geologists making hasty reconnoissances, and in only a few cases by 
collectors who have any skill in selecting material. What is needed is, as I stated 
in my previous letter, for someone to go there who can recognize the species and 
carefully work out the stratigraphical relations of the different classes of material. 
If this could be done, even though no collections at all were made, the object which 
Professor Diller wishes to secure would be accomplished. Still, it would be better to 
make additional collections at critical points, especially as Professor Fontaine, in 
working up the material, has carefully indicated the localities from which further 
collections need to be made. 
I received instructions to visit this region, and arranged with Mr. 
Will Q. Brown, mining engineer, at Riddles, Oregon, to provide an 
outfit and accompany me as guide and scientific assistant. I also wrote 
to Professor Diller at his camp at Myrtle Point, on the coast due west 
of there, urging him, if possible, to join us, in the hope that all of 
us working together might succeed in tracing out the complicated 
stratigraphy. Owing to work in hand that must be finished before I 
could go, and to the necessity of stopping for a week in Wyoming to 
examine the Jurassic cycad locality in the Freezeout Hills, I was unable 
to reach Riddles until September 10. Mr. Brown had the outfit in 
readiness and Professor Diller and Mr. Storrs were on the ground. 
The party left Riddles on the 11th and proceeded at once with pack 
and riding animals to the Buck Mountain region, distant only 9 miles 
by a mountain trail, and camped at the foot of the mountain on the 
north side, on the branch of Olalla Creek called Thompson or Hunter 
Creek, in the bed of which, some distance below, Mr. Storrs had first 
obtained the plants denoting a Jurassic age. Five days were spent 
