1921] Merriani: Palaeontological Research on the Pacific Coast 239 



Although the palaeontological studies of vertebrates, invertebrates, 

 and plants have the same fundamental significance with relation to 

 the great problems of biological history, and though all may ultimately 

 have similar bearing upon questions of time classification and corre- 

 lation, it is true tliat the history of these three groups has been 

 worked out on the West Coast with rather distinct original aims 

 and in different regions. These fields may therefore be considered 

 separately. 



HISTOEY OF INVEETEBEATE PALAEONTOLOGY 



To T. A. Conrad, of the Philadelpliia Academy of Sciences, 

 belongs, unquestionably, tlie credit of pioneering invertebrate palaeon- 

 tological work on the West Coast. His descriptions of the faunas 

 obtained from Tertiary beds near the mouth of the Columbia River 

 give us the first discussion of a marine fauna on this side of the 

 continent, and offer the first correlation of a West Coast fauna with 

 that of a region outside the Pacific area. Conrad correlated the 

 fossils from Astoria with Miocene types of the Atlantic Coast of the 

 United States, and also with faunas of the Miocene of Great Britain. 

 Although various modifications of this correlation have been made 

 in later years, through use of larger and better collections, and in 

 adjustment to a more thoroughly worked out modern classification, 

 the studies of Conrad still hold as a good pattern for pioneer investi- 

 gations, prosecuted as they were under conditions vastly different 

 from those controlling the work of students of the present day. 



Conrad's papers on the Tertiary of California, published in the 

 Pacific Railroad surveys, beginning with the discussion of the Eocene 

 of Canada de las Uvas and the Miocene of Ocoya Creek, in volume 5 

 of these reports, give us again an excellent form of preliminary work, 

 in which the determinations of age and descriptions of species are as 

 satisfactorily done as one could expect under the conditions. His 

 studies were continued in volumes 6 and 7, through description of 

 faunas ranging rather widely over the Tertiary. 



With the inauguration of the second Geological Survey of Cali- 

 fornia in 1861, under the direction of J. D. Whitney, palaeontological 

 study of the West Coast faunas was given an unusually important 

 place. It is evident that Whitney realized the necessity for careful 

 studies of this nature, in order to make possible necessary correlation 



