Diller and iSchuchert — Devonian Rocks in California. 419 



Part II. 



During the field seasons of 1884 and 1893, the U. S. Geo- 

 logical Survey acquired six lots of Devonian fossils, collected 

 by Messrs. Diller, Stanton, and Storrs, from six localities in 

 Shasta and Siskiyou counties, California. 



These fossils, comprising- about thirty species, most of which 

 are corals, demonstrate the undoubted presence of middle 

 Devonian deposits in California where rocks of this age have 

 long been looked for by geologists, more particularly since the 

 recent discovery of Silurian fossils.* In the geological litera- 

 ture treating of California, the writer finds that Mr. Fairbanks 

 was probably the first to refer certain strata provisionally to 

 the Devonian. He says : "In my former paper I traced the 

 Paleozoic rocks of Shasta county, part Carboniferous and 

 part probably Devonian, south along the main Coast range to 

 San Francisco Bay."f This is the only specific reference to 

 probable Devonian rocks in California. The locality on which 

 Mr. Fairbanks based his conclusions is near Kennet on the 

 Sacramento River, and is described by him as follows : " The 

 fossils in the limestone [of Backbone Creek] are exclusively 

 corals, and in places the branching stems [Cladopora~\ form 

 almost the complete mass and weather out finely on the sur- 

 face. In fact the great mass of the limestone seems to be 

 made of corals."^: 



The most southerly of these localities (No. 1 of the annexed 

 table) is three miles northwest of Kennet. The next two(Nos. 

 4 and 5) are about twenty-two miles north on Hazel Creek, 

 and two others (Nos. 2 and 3), ten miles above the latter on 

 one of the branches of Soda Creek, about five miles northwest 

 of Castle Crag. This fauna indicates a single terrane, since 

 the localities each have from one to four species in common, as 

 the annexed list of fossils shows, 



About thirty miles to the northwest of the Hazel Creek 

 localities, at a place three miles southwest of Gazelle, Siskiyou 

 county (locality 6), there is another outcrop of Devonian lime- 

 stone yielding a larger fauna of corals and some Mollusca. 

 Fossils were collected from this limestone, both in 1884 and in 

 1893. This horizon appears to be higher or younger faunally 

 than that just mentioned, since but one of its species is known 

 to occur in the Devonian limestone of Shasta county. All of 

 the fossils studied are from limestone, and nothing as yet is 

 known of a sandstone or shale fauna. 



* Geol. of the Taylorville region of Cal., by J. S. Diller. Bull. Geol. Soc. 

 America, vol. iii, p. 376, 1892. 



f American Geologist, vol. xi, p. 70, 1893. 



% Eleventh Rep. State Mineralogist of Cal., p. 48, 1893. 



