304 The American Geologist. Tune, eee 
The upper division caps one of the highest hills in the 
basin, occurs one and one-half miles south of Gorman’s sta- 
tion, is splendidly exposed, dips gently to southwest and clear- 
ly overlies the earlier stratified members of the series. Ina 
nearly vertical section of about 400 feet there are several 
heavy beds of perfectly waterworn and apparently river-de- 
posited gravel alternating with clayey layers including the 
characteristic red, sandy, clayey, fine-grained, nearly non- 
pebbly material which in Soledad canyon I identified as buried 
soils. In fact, this upper and clearly alluvial division is near- 
ly identical in character with the Saugus or red-banded divis- 
ion of the Upper Pliocene in the Santa Clara basin. The two 
basins are not connected, but the same physical conditions must 
have affected both. Mr. Hamlin says the red clays have a 
wide distribution in the southern Coast ranges. 
The middle member appears to be marine in origin. Mr. 
William Smith, a rancher and ex-prospector, 72 years old, 
living eight miles by road south-southwest of Gorman’s sta- 
tion, showed me a remarkably well preserved “scallop” shell, 
(apparently Pecten carinum Gould, common in the Wildcat 
series in Humboldt county,) which he claimed to have found 
in the mountains five miles north where only gneiss or the 
Upper Pliocene are due. There was cemented gravel still 
attached to it.” It is not quite clear by what route the sea- 
water reached this isolated mountain locality, now hemmed in 
by high ranges of old rocks, but I rather think it was by way 
of a valley connecting with the coastal lowlands to the west 
between the Fraser-Pinos range and the San Emedio range, 
or by the San Joaquin and Salinas valleys. 
The series is tilted toward the center around the borders 
of the basin at angles from 10° to 30°, but in the central por- 
tion, much of the formation is practically horizontal. The 
estimated combined thickness of the lower or sstatic-water di- 
visions is 2000 feet and of the upper or alluvial division, 
500 feet. Since uplift, compression and tilting, it has been 
eroded into small, barren, steep hills with many cliffs. The 
most interesting fact connected with this basin is that marine 
Upper Pliocene strata have been raised on the flanks of Fras- 
er mountain, during the Quaternary era, to an altitude of 
6000 feet above the sea. 
