The Green Forest tribune., 1899-06-08
California Letter.
Los Alamitos, Cal.

is one about which many volumes might be written without being exhausted: Living in an ocean bed. We have heard of ''lite on on ocean wave and home on the rolling deep" But little have some of us thought or even imagined that many of us are liv- ing within the confines of an an
 cient ocean bed, which was during some past ages, the home of the whale, the shark, the sea lion and the myriads of fishes, as we'll as the bivalve, and all the host et molluscous animals winch com prised the animate life of the ocean at that time. The specimens col lected by various exploring ex- petitions and a careful examination of same by some of our experts reveal the fact that oceans have been where our continents now are, and that whole continents as it were have existed but are now swallowed up by the ocean. We are told that there is continually going on at the bottom of the ocean formation of blue clay which is the more extensive of de- posits. Together with this de- posit is also found green and red muds, and coral muds, with the vario kinds of ooze which form the truly pelagic deposits. Of all of these deposits it IS found that the rcd clay is distributed over the largest areas in the modern oceans. 1t is in the Pacific ocean that the typical examples of this deposit are found, but like other marine deposits this one passes away Iatterly, according to posi- tion and depth, into the adj accent kinds of sea ooze clay. The chief characteristics of these de-
 posts is the presence in them of continental debris, and may per- haps be called the sediments of medium depths and of warmer zones, because they diminish in great depths and tend to disa- apear towards the poles. The distribution of the oceanic de posits of which we are speaking may be summarized as follows. Blue muds, green muds and sands. red muds, volcanic muds and sands, and coral muds and sands, which are found in those regions adjacent to California. It is supposed to take many thousands of years to form the many strati6ed deposits on the ocean bed. But we must examine briefly the course of these ultimate changes in the sedinentary deposits, and the final formation of the great artesian water courses beneath the earth, which will give us better idea of the circumstances and reality of the subject under consideration. Far up the slopes of ''Old Baldy" whose sum- init towers 10. l42 it. above sea level, may be found some of the most promi- nent deep sea deposits, including the ever present bivalyous molluscus, with fragments of the various sedi- mentary deposits. These same evil dences are found all along the San Barnirdino and Santa Anna range of mountains, while the weary traveller as he wends his way over the shifting sands of the Mojave desert, canno t help but note the many existing proofs of the once inhabited home of the many animals which now inhabit the ocean: for their. fragmentary shells are scattered hither and thither in all directions by the desert winds, while the streams which drain the moun- tain slopes distribute these shells to- gether with the volcanic muds and sands over tue distant plains, or they wend their way to the Pacific Ocean. But it is not necessary for us to con- fine ourselves to these superficial evil dences in proof of our subject. There are others of greater importance found beneath the earth in the numer. ons strata which comprise the walls of the great artesian belt underlying the most fertile and productive section of the country along the Pacific coast. This arteslan belt of country includes Grange, Los Angeles and San Barnar- dino counties and varies in depth from 65 to l50 feet in the noted Peat Lands of Orange county to several