Review of Recent Geological Literature. 337 
markable Quaternary erogenic disturbance has uplifted and steeply 
tilted the thick Mepced series of richly fossiliferous Pliocene sandstone 
strata on the peninsula of San Francisco, a few miles south of the < tolden 
Gate. The center and cause of the disturbed area is the Montara moun- 
tain, an up thrust portion of the granite floor on which the Mesozoic and 
Pliocene beds had been deposited. The latest and chief uplift of Mon- 
tara mountain took place at the end of the Pliocene and during Pleisto- 
cene time, which also, according to Turner, included the similar up- 
thrust of Mount Diablo, about 25 miles east-northeast of San Francisco; 
and on the other side of the great valley of California, according to Le 
Conte, Diller, Becker and others, the extensive faulting and tilting 
which produced the present high Sierra Nevada range belonged to the 
same period. Dr. Lawson thinks that a part of the area of the Merced 
series had sunk to the vertical extent of more than a mile, the measured 
thickness of the series, during its deposition. Its basal beds now out- 
crop at the altitude of 700 feet above the sea, indicating an equally 
great re-elevation. But if this series comprised the outwardly dipping 
beds of an advancing delta brought by the Pliocene representatives of 
the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers, as Shaler has suggested for the 
similarly extensive section of inclined strata at Gay Head, Martha's 
Vineyard, the required subsidence and ensuing upward movement would 
be reduced to moderate amounts. 
The time of the depression of large portions of the coast and some of 
the islands southward to San Diego is referred by the author to the Pli- 
ocene period, and that of their uplift to the Pleistocene, the division 
between the Tertiary and Quaternary eras being marked by a general 
reversal in the epeirogenic movements of this coastal region. The up- 
ward movement seems to have been closely related to the much greater 
uplift occurring farther north, which extended from the Pacific to the 
Arctic and Atlantic coasts and at its culmination caused the accumula- 
tion of the North American ice-sheet. The Pliocene depresskm near 
the Golden Gate permitting the deposition of the Merced series seems 
to have been contemporaneous with a somewhat greater elevation than 
now back from the coast, since the rivers would need more than their 
present slopes for transportation of the sands forming the Merced strata. 
It is further evident that the Pleistocene upheaval at its culmination 
raised the coast on the latitude of San Francisco at least II I feet above 
ils present hight, as shown by the depth of the channel at the narrow- 
est pari of the Golden Gate, and by the eroded lower portion of the trib- 
utary valley now occupied l»\ the San Francisco and San Pablobays. A 
much greater vertical extent of this uplift, however, seems to have 
been attained and held during a time sufficient for tl rosi< f the 
deeply submerged valleys on this continental slope, which have been 
made known by Davidson and Le < lonte, reaching to a depl b of 2,000 to 
3,120 feet where they cross the general submarine contour line of 600 
feet below the sea level. The C 1) a II lie] i llg of these \ a 1 1 e\ s or Ca noils on 
a high coast, with plentiful rainfall. ma.\ have been very rapid and some- 
times independent of any connection with important valleys <>l the 
