386 The American Geologist. June, lyoi. 
Slight deformation of the crust with deposition of the Millstone 
grit==Poftsz'ilU' Coiigloiiicratc. G. F. Matthew. 
St. John, N. B., April, 1901. 
The Structure of Di.vmond He.mj; 0.\iu". — Two summers ago i 
made some observations on the structure of the beds at and about 
Diamond Head, Oahu, Hawaiian Islands. A brief summary of them 
was printed by Dr. C. H. Hitchcock in liis account of the geology 
of Oahu (Bull. Geol. Soc. of Am., 11 pp. 57-60.) I am not aware thiit 
there is anything in these observations to excite emotion, but it resulted 
in some very emotional newspaper articles, followed in cooler vein by 
contributions to other periodicals including a paper in the American 
Geologist for January last, pp. 1-5, by the Rev. Dr. S. E. Bishop, and 
still others later. I am averse to controversy in matters which can be 
settled by an appeal to facts, and especially to controversy over a 
scientific matter with a person not trained in the specialty to which the 
subject matter belongs: for reasons which are obvious. Moreover, Dr. 
Bishop is known as an amateur observer who has done service to 
science in various ways and a most worthy person, individually. 
The reiteration of the opinions expressed by the reverend doctor has 
been so prolonged that it has been suggested to me that further silence 
on my part might be misunderstood among geologists, and. therefore, 
I ask space in your journal for a few statements, as follows: 
1. The hypothetical cone described at such length bj' Dr. Bishop, 
does not, as a matter of fact, exist at Diamond Head. 
2. The observations made by me and recorded in Dr. Hitchcock's 
paper above referred to, are sound ; and can be verified by any person 
with good eyes, reasonable powers of observation, and a moderate 
familiarity with Tertiary stratigraphic geology. 
3. The inferences or hypotheses which I drew from those observa- 
tions are subject to the criticism of experts in Tertiary geology and 
will take their chances of acceptance in the usual manner. 
4. The old beaches with their corals, sedentary bivalves like Chaina, 
Ostrca, etc., and other attached invertebrates, remaining as they grew 
in life, extend at least two-thirds around the cone, where I traced them 
(and I have little doubt, entirely around it), and under the tuff and 
thin sheets of lava of which the lower part of the cone is composed. 
Every little bluff at Pearl Harbor and sections cut in sewering the city 
of Honolulu exhibit similar phenomena, which are probably common 
to the entire periphery of the island where the sea has not eaten them 
away. The inter-stratification is undeniable except in defiance of the 
most obvious facts. But the elevation is greater toward Diamond 
Head and less in the opposite direction, though the difference is not 
very great. In the middle portions of the cone the beaches are replaced 
by horizontal layers of compacted coral sand which can be seen half a 
mile, and which leaches out in~the calcareous snowy crusts so conspic- 
uous on the slopes. I did not visit the upper part of the cone, but it 
presented no external appearances different from that lower down. 
5. I do not intend to publish anything further on this subject, in 
this connection. 
