124 The AmericcDt Geologist. February, 1897 
to 1874 by J. D. Whitney, extended greatly the Chico group 
at the same time that it created the Tejon group and the 
Martinez group, and referred the whole three groups to the 
Cretaceous system, with the forced result of the suppression 
of the Tertiary Eocene in California (Oeol. Surv. California, 
vol. II, preface by J. D. Whitney, 1869). The present writer, 
in a second visit to California, during 1875, more than twenty 
years after a first exploration in connection with the Pacific 
railroad exploration by the 35th degree of latitude, took spe- 
cial care to investigate the typical localities of Fort Tejon 
and Monte Diablo and was enabled to give, for the first time, 
the geological section in the vicinity of Fort Tejon (Report 
on the Geology of a portion of Southern California in Annual 
Report Chief of Engineers to the Secretary of War, pp. 158- 
172, Washington, 1876), showing beyond any possible doubt 
that the Tejon group v/as Tertiary; that the Martinez group 
was an artificial division without any value, and that the 
fauna collected by Drs. Randall and Trask was truly Eocene 
Tertiary, while the fauna of the Tejon indicated an upper 
Eocene or Oligocene age. 
The Wallala beds seem Cretaceous, and it is possible that 
some confusion has been created by referring them to strata 
regarded as Chico beds by some errors of correlation. An ex- 
act equivalency must be established by rigorous comparison 
of the fauna of the Wallala beds and the fauna of the Chico 
creek before drawing the conclusions arrived at by Mr. Diller. 
But whatever may be the result of detailed observations in 
northern California, we possess now enough facts from the re- 
searches made at Chico creek, Monte Diablo, the Coast ranges, 
south of San Francisco as far as Fort Tejon, to allow us to 
say that great confusion in classification and correlation, in an 
important part of the stratigraphy of California, is due to a 
wrong use of paheontology, united with a total disregard of 
stratigraphical principles, and lithology. It is no wonder that 
the geologists who started from California, with the erroneous 
classification adopted by the survey of that state, wanted to 
place the Laramee formation in the Cretaceous, as an exten- 
sion and as an ofl['-shoot of the Chico-Tejon formation. The 
one was a corollary of the other. 
