300 The American Geologist. ae ee 
-bare craggy hills showing the structure lines very plainly. 
The color is a uniform white or very light gray, and its ter- 
rane may be distinguished by this feature a long way off. 
Its thickness seems to be about the same as the Buff gravel, 
3000 feet. It usually dips 10° to 30°, but several miles west 
of Lang station, it has been tilted to 45°. This division I sup- 
pose to be marine. This is indicated not alone by its physical 
features, but by some paleontological evidence. An old pros- 
pector has referred me to a small canyon near Humphreys 
station (where this division alone is due) as yielding marine 
shells and other fossil debris including the bones of a whale, 
but I did not have the time to verify this statement. Marine 
shells are abundant near the oil wells about one and one-half 
miles southeast of Newhall, and Mr. Homer Hamlin says they 
occur in this Upper Pliocene series. The Lang rather than 
the Soledad division is due there and the former may be mar- 
inc in the western part of the basin. Five miles north of 
Saugus, marine shells have been collected by Mr. J. W. Wen- 
zel of Los Angeles, an intelligent miner, who states that they 
come from the gravel series. There can be little doubt that 
some part of the Upper Pliocene series is marine and from 
my observations on it, I should say it is the middle or Soledad 
division. 
The Saugus Division—This is a great series of unlith- 
ified sand, gravel and clay and has the appearance of a Quater- 
nary deposit of no greater age than the Kansan or Illinois 
drift sheets of the eastern states. Layers 10 to 30 feet thick 
of light gray gravel and sand alternate with layers of red 
sandy clay resembling old buried soils. The red layers are 2 
to 10 feet thick and grade downward graduaily into the gray 
gravel but end abruptly at the top. The whole deposit is strati- 
fied, waterworn and water-deposited; but the only real sharp, 
persistent lines are those at the top of the red layers. Its 
physical characters are unmistakably those of an alluvial de- 
posit, a river delta, progressively sinking and receiving fresh 
layers of gravel, overlaid by silt, the surface of which latter 
was weathered into soil between disturbances. The terrane 
Sccupies a central position in the basin and has an estimated 
thickness of 2000 feet. It is splendidly exposed in railway 
cuts in Soledad canyon near Saugus where it dips to the south- 
