Excerpt from Description of the Fossils and Shells Collected in California
Sir: I have examined the very interesting organic remains which you collected in California, and the drawings of such species as were too fragile to preserve, and I herein submit a few remarks upon their geological relations. There appear to be several distinct groups; but I cannot pretend, from such scanty materials, to designate what particular formation every group represents. There is no obscurity resting on the deposits of Santa Barbara and San Pedro, which represent a recent formation, in which you inform me the remains of the mammoth occur. The shells are generally those which live in the adjacent waters, and indicate little, if any, change of temperature since their deposition. The littoral character of this formation is very evident. Water-worn shells and fragments show the action of the surf, whilst entire specimens of bivalves, and Pholadidas, and Saxicavae, remaining undisturbed in their self-excavated domicils, exhibit the same disposition of marine shells that is familiar to the observer on all sandy and argillaceous shores. They burrow in clay, mud, or sand, beyond the ordinary action of the surf; whilst some are scooped out by the tempest-driven surge, and others preyed upon by fishes and marine animals of various kinds, and are thus broken up and deposited among the living species.
Of the Eocene, and the recent formation alluded to, I can speak with confidence; but the intermediate beds are of uncertain age.
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