Editorial Comment. 379 
'The Geomorphogeny of the coast of northern California"* 
that this peneplain of the Sacramento valley may be the same 
as the one he describes in that paper, and this Coast Range 
peneplain he shows to be Pliocene or later in age. While this 
article is merely suggestive of future work, it would be very 
incomplete without reference to Kemp's "Ore Deposits of the 
United States," of which a new and revised edition has just 
been issued (1895). Prof. Kemp discusses the age of the 
Auriferous gravels, and gives ver}' full references to the litera- 
ture. 
At the present time it appears injudicious to the writer to 
consider the age of even the older graA'els as a settled ques- 
tion. Much light may be expected when the collections of 
fossil plants from these gravels now in the U. S. Nati- 
onal Museum are thoroughly investigated, and compared with 
floras from other localities in western America. 
EDITORIAL COMMENT. 
The Deep Shaft at Livonia, N. Y. 
A very interesting contribution to economic geology and 
especially to the knowledge of the succession of faunas in 
some of the Paleozoic rocks is the account of geological re- 
sults from the excavation of the Livonia salt shaft in Living- 
ston county, N. Y., as given by Mr. D. D. Luther, in the Thir- 
teenth Annual Report of the state geologist of New York 
(1895). Probably never before has a geologist had the 
opportunity of observing on such a grand scale the con- 
secutive variations in sedimentation and in associations of 
organic forms as has been afforded by this immense probe into 
the Devonian rocks. Here is a shaft measuring 14 by 24 feet 
and extending to u depth of 1,432 feet, which means that 
nearly 20,000 cubic yards of sedimentar}^ and fossiliferous 
rock were taken out, foot by foot, in vertical sequence, and 
all of this was spread out, in order, under the eyes of a geolo- 
gist- 
*Bull. Dept. Geol. Univ. Cala., vol. i, p. 271. 
