RECENT ELEVATION OF THE COAST. 
187 
plates. This surface is perfectly smooth and polished, and looks as if it had been used for 
mastication but recently. It is reported that more teeth and a portion of the skeleton have 
been found several miles in the interior, towards Los Angeles. 
The shells at Santa Barbara are found in a similar hank, hut only one species was obtained— 
a large Crepidula , ( 0 . princeps, Conrad.) Plate VI, figs. 52 and 52a. This, in color and 
general appearance, is like the fossils from San Pedro, hut it is a very large species and a 
beautiful fossil. 
The evidences of a recent elevation are very striking at Monterey, where beach accumulations 
may he seen resting upon the water-worn surfaces of the soft Tertiary rocks at the quarries, a 
long distance from the bay and many feet above it. The shingle contains pebbles or rounded 
masses of the rocks below, and the surfaces of the latter are not only rounded and worn into hollows 
and grooves, but are perforated by boring shells. The cavities made by the shells still remain, 
and are filled up with sea sand. Beach-shingle was also found on the top of the hill, formed 
by the beds of infusoria. This includes pebbles of granite (probably broken from Point Pinos 
or a part of that range) and masses of the underlying silicious beds, all of them rounded and 
water-worn. One of these masses, softer than the others, had been perforated by a Pliolas. This 
beach formation is now about 300 feet above the bay, and shows a very recent elevation. Bones 
of Cetaceans are said to be found on the opposite shore of the bay, about ten miles inland from 
ISanta Cruz. They are reported also from many other points along the coast, but high above 
the sea level. According to Bev. Walter Colton, 1 they are found near Livermore’s rancho,- on 
the top of a mountain overlooking the valley of the San Joaquin. 
The general appearance of the coast favors the conclusion of a recent upheaval, for the high 
hills and mountains are almost everwhere flanked by a slope, which, by its uniform acclivity, 
reminds one of an ocean beach. It is believed that careful examination will show the existence 
of ancient beach-lines at the upper margin of these slopes. The occurrence of beach-shingle 
overlaying the bituminous strata northwest of Los Angeles has been mentioned ; similar 
accumulations were afterwards noticed in other places. It is interesting to observe, in this 
connexion, that a depression of the land in the vicinity of Los Angeles, to the extent of 1,000 feet, 
would cause the submergence of a wide area, and carry the shore-line many miles inland, so 
that the bend of the coast would conform to the base of the mountains as far east as the mountain 
of San Bernardino. With the exception of a slight and isolated elevation, which forms the 
headland of the open bay of San Pedro, and a range of low hills between San Bernardino and 
the coast, there is no elevation of any consequence between the present beach and the base of 
the mountains ; so that a depression to the extent indicated would submerge the whole slope. 
GENERAL OBSERVATIONS ON THE TERTIARY FORMATIONS. 
We see by the foregoing description that the principal localities which have been identified 
as Tertiary are separated by wide intervals along the line of the survey, and that they present 
a diversity in their lithological characters and organic remains. The sandstone formation of 
San Francisco, Benicia, and the vicinity, having been previously described in Chapter XII, has 
not been considered in this general view of the Tertiary deposits. It forms another and a 
distinct group, lithologically, from those that have been described. 
The lithological differences between the strata of the different localities are such that it would 
1 Three years in California; p. 385. 
