336 The America-)} Geologist. November, 1894 
Andrew C. Lawson. University of California; Bulletin of the Depart- 
ment of Geology, vol. i, pp. 115-160, with two plates arid a section; Dec, 
1893. The term diastrophism, proposed by Powell for the collective 
processess of deformation of the earth's crust, includes orogeny (moun- 
tain-making) and epeirogeny (continent-making). The last of these 
terms, as proposed and defined by Gilbert, embraces the uplifts and 
subsidences of large areas producing continents and plateaus, ocean 
beds and continental basins. Both these classes of orogeriic and epei- 
rogenic earth-movements have produced important changes on the 
Californian coast since the beginning of the Quaternary era. 
Marine wave-cut terraces of post-Pliocene age are described by Dr. 
Lawson in this paper at numerous places along the distance of 450 miles 
from San Francisco southward to San Diego, near the Mexican bound- 
ary. They show an epeirogenic uplift of these parts of the coast (and 
the author thinks the upward movement to have been continuous for 
all this distance), during post-Pliocene time, to an extent of from 800 to 
1,500 feet'. In the vicinity of San Diego the successive terraces marking 
stages in the emergence of the land are approximately 800 feet, 700,000, 
520, 340, and 160 feet above the sea. Pleistocene marine fossils have 
been collected there by Dall at the altitude of 600 feet and twelve miles 
distant from the sea. At San Pedro hill, a projecting point of the 
coast about 100 miles northwest of San Diego, the appproximate alti- 
tudes of the old shore lines are 1,240, 1,040, 960, 860, 700, 550, 400, 300, 
240, 160, and 120 feet, The terrace at 1,240 feet has abundant water- 
worn gravel; and the limestone of this shore, as of several others lower, 
displays plentiful borings made by lithodomous mollusks. On San Cle- 
mente island, about 75 miles west of San Diego, twenty-two terraces 
were noted, the highest being 1,500 feet above the sea. Santa Catalina 
island, however, lying midway between San Clemente and the San 
Pedro headland, shows no such elevated strand lines and appears even 
to have been sinking while the areas south and north of it were rising. 
Probably other islands of this group also stood higher than now and 
even had connection with similarly higher adjacent portions of the 
mainland during late Tertiary and early Quaternary time, as Le Conte 
concludes for Santa Rosa from the occurrence of elephant bones on 
that island and for Santa Cruz from peculiarities of its flora. These is- 
lands lie opposite to Santa Barbara and are about 100 miles northwest 
of those examined by Dr. Lawson, whose opinion that all the coast 
shared in the Pleistocene uplift, needs therefore to be tested by further 
exploration, especially through Santa Barbara county. 
At Carmelo bay, 300 miles northwest of San Clemente and Santa Cat- 
alina, and about 80 miles south of San Francisco, abundant evidences 
of post-Pliocene submergence and re-elevation are again found up to the 
bight of 800 feet, as noted by Dr. Lawson in pages 46-57 of the same 
volume. Some 30 miles farther north, in the vicinity of the town of 
Santa Cruz and westward along the north coast of the bay of Monterey, 
nine terraces were observed, the highest being at 1,200 feet, 
Besides the epeirogenic movements which are thus ascertained, a re- 
