152 University of California Publications in Geology [Vol. 9 



group recognized by the California Survey and exposed on the North 

 Fork of the Cottonwood Creek and at the locality at Horsetown. In 

 1888 Diller and Stanton 20 state: 



At Horsetown and Texas springs, however, only a few miles northeast of 

 the Cottonwood section, many fossils have been found that evidently belong 

 very near the top of the Horsetown beds. Lists of species from these localities 

 showing a commingling of the Horsetown and Chico faunas have already been 

 published. 



Yet in 1901 Stanton is quoted by Merriam 21 in regard to a John Day, 

 Oregon, fauna to the effect that 



A similar fauna, with some additions, occurs in the sandstones at Texas 

 Springs and near Horsetown, Shasta County, California, and has been regarded 

 as proof of the blending of the Shasta and Chico faunas, partly because the 

 beds at Horsetown had long been thought to belong to Gabb 's Shasta group and 

 had even given the name, Horsetown beds, to the upper division of the Shasta. 

 It is evident, however, from White 's somewhat vague definition of the Horse- 

 town beds, that the term was meant to include the strata immediately above 

 the Knoxville that contain the fauna so well developed on the north fork of 

 Cottonwood Creek, in the neighborhood of Ono, and which really has no close 

 relationship with this basal Chico fauna of Texas Springs, Horsetown, and 

 elsewhere. 



As far as the writer is aware, this phase of the Shasta-Chico problem 

 has not been discussed elsewhere. 



Such an interpretation is in accord with an earlier statement made 

 by Diller and Stanton 22 to the effect that the Chico beds extend from 

 ' ' a short distance above the mouth of Hulen Creek to Gas Point, ' ' for, 

 in the writer's opinion, the fauna from the locality on Hulen Creek is 

 very closely related to the one near Horsetown, but it is not considered 

 that these represent Chico faunas. 



The strata at the Hulen Creek locality just above its confluence 

 with the North Fork of the Cottonwood are composed of conglomeratic 

 sandstones lying apparently conformably upon sandy shales, which but 

 a short distance stratigraphically below contain a typical Horsetown 

 fauna. These psephitic strata grade above into shales similar to those 

 just below. These upper shales grade upward into a massive con- 

 glomerate of several hundred feet in thickness which outcrops in the 

 gorge just below the junction of Hulen and Cottonwood creeks. These 

 conglomerates have yielded the writer no determinable fossils. The 



20 Diller, J. S., and Stanton, T. W., op. ext., p. 445. 



21 Merriam John C, A Contribution to the Geology of the John Day Basin, 

 Univ. Calif. Publ. Bull. Dept. Geol., vol. 2, pp. 283, 284, 1901. 



22 Diller, J. S., and Stanton, T. W., op. ext., p. 444. 



