stone, with most conspicuous examples of ripple-mark and oblique laminæ. As the waters of the Cretaceous sea were gradually receding, toward the Atlantic, on the one side, and toward the Pacific on the other, remnants were left in the form of lakes, estuaries, &c., which now afford us the last indications of marine and brackish water deposits in the central portions of the West. In these deposits we have first a mingling of brackish and fresh water forms, gradually passing up to pure fresh water and terrestrial species, with no return to the marine condition again.

In the upper part of the Cretaceous formation No. 5, on the Moreau, we find the Ostrea subtrigonalis, and in the Judith deposits a form occurs in the greatest abundance, which is undistinguishable from it.

We have also mentioned the fact that the fossils of upper part of No. 5 seem to have existed upon the verge of the Tertiary period, that they sometimes present peculiar forms more closely allied to Tertiary types than Cretaceous, and were it not for the presence of the genera Baculites, Ammonites, Inoceramus, &c., which are everywhere supposed to have become extinct at the close of the Cretaceous epoch, we would be in doubt whether to pronounce them Tertiary or Cretaceous. These facts would seem to indicate a foreshadowing of the Tertiary era, and that the transition from one great period to the other was gradual and quiet, the change in the physical conditions being ultimately sufficient to destroy the Cretaceous fauna, and bring into existence that of the Tertiary. Again, in numerous localities where No. 5 is fully developed and a large thickness of Tertiary deposits is superimposed, so that near some of the mountain elevations I have found it difficult to draw the line of separation, no apparent physical break occuring in the sediments.

Will not these statements go far to show that the estuary deposits ushered in the dawn of the Tertiary epoch and induce the belief that they belong to the first part or Eocene period? This point is an important one to establish, on account of its bearing upon the history of the physical development of our western continent.

The estuary deposits soon lose their marine and brackish character and gradually pass up into the true lignite strata, of purely fresh-water origin, thence by a slight discordancy into the Wind River Valley beds, which give evidence of an intermediate deposit between the true lignite and White River Tertiary beds. Then come the White River bone beds, which pass up into the Pliocene of the Niobrara by a slight physical break, and the latter are lost in the Yellow Marl or Loess deposits. I have estimated the entire thickness of Tertiary rocks in the Northwest at from 5,000 to 6,000 feet, and their interest will be appreciated when I venture to suggest that by thorough investigation they will doubtless reveal in a most remarkably clear manner the history of the physical growth and development, step by step, of the central portion of this continent. I shall treat this subject more fully in a future paper, and would refer to the forthcoming report of Captain Raynolds for the details of the facts sustaining my opinions. We have no evidence, so far as I know, of long continued deep-water deposits in the West, until far up in the Cretaceous period. If we examine the Potsdam sandstone we shall find that where it reaches its greatest force the lower portion is composed of an aggregation of quartz pebbles cemented with siliceous matter, and as we pass upward, we find it arranged in thin layers quite compact with fucoidal markings, ripplemark, &c. Everywhere are most abundant examples of oblique laminæ of deposition and ripple and wave markings-evidences of shallow waters.

During the long period that elapsed between the deposition of the earliest part of the Silurian epoch and the commencement of the Carboniferous we have reason to believe that dry land prevailed over a large portion of the West. The Carboniferous epoch commences with thin layers of arenaceous deposits, gradually passing up into homogeneous siliceous and calcareous beds. The latter are never more than from 20 to 50 feet in thickness, and then the arenaceous sediments begin again to predomi nate, and all the proofs of shallow as well as turbulent waters are shown. We then pass up through the red arenaceous deposits and Jurassic beds, and find no rocks that indicate deep water deposition. Cretaceous formation No. 1 commences in many places with a considerable thickness of an aggregation of water-worn pebbles passing up into thin alternate layers of arenaceous and argillaceous sediments with thick beds of sandstone with ripple markings and oblique laminæ, then gradually ceases in No. 2, and through Nos. 2, 3, and 4, the sediments indicate that they were accumulated in comparatively deep and quiet waters. No. 2 is a black plastic clay, No. 3, gray marl, and No. 4, a dark indurated, sometimes laminated, clay, with many calcareous concretions. In No. 5 we gradually approach indications of shallow water until dry land appears, as already stated.

It will not be possible at this time to mention in detail all the oscillations of surface and other physical changes to which we have reason for supposing the country was subjected during all these periods. It is sufficient for our present purpose to show that, except during the Middle Cretaceous epoch, no long-continued periods of quiet water prevailed in these ancient western seas.

The evidence appears to me to point to the conclusion that a much milder climate prevailed throughout the western portions of our continent, during a greater part of

the Tertiary period, than that which exists in the same latitudes at the present time. The organic remains appear to indicate a subtropical climate, or one similar to that of our Gulf States. Near the close of the Cretaceous epoch the waters of the great Cretaceous sea receded toward the present position of the Atlantic on the one side, and toward that of the Pacific on the other, leaving large areas in the central portions of the West, dry land. These areas were of course in close proximity to the sea, and comparatively but slightly elevated above the ocean waters. In regard to the mollusca which have been found quite abundantly entombed in the lignite-bearing strata, it is an interesting fact that the most nearly allied living representatives of many of these species are now found inhabiting the streams of Southern Africa, Asia, China, and Siam, apparently indicating the existence of a tropical climate in these latitudes at as late a period as the Tertiary epoch.

Again, the luxuriance of the flora which has been so perfectly preserved in the lignite strata of the West point to the same conclusion. It is true that until recently no species have been found which belong exclusively to a tropical vegetation, but during our last expedition we obtained a species of true fan-palm, very closely allied to Sabal lamonis, figured by Dr. Heer in his Flora Tertiaria Helvetia." "The most northern limit of palms is that of Chamaerops palmetto, in North America, in latitude 340-36°, and of Chamaerops humilis in Europe, near Nice, in 430-44° N. latitude." The true palms of our present day are considered as having their native land within the tropics. That this or a similar condition of climate continued throughout the accumulation of the Wind River Valley deposits may be inferred from their molluscan remains, which are more nearly allied to tropical forms.

Again, we have in this region, as before mentioned, an extensive area occupied by the lignite-bearing strata. There are from 30 to 50 beds of lignite, varying in thickness from 1 inch to 7 feet. Over all this great area there are at the present time no large forests, no timber except that which skirts the streams. We now know that during the Tertiary period vast forests of timber must have covered many portions of the far West from the abundance and variety of the vegetable remains preserved in the rocks. Silicified trunks of trees, 50 to 100 feet in length and 2 to 4 feet in diameter, and stumps which indicate gigantic forest trees occur abundantly over hundreds of square miles along the Missouri and Yellowstone Rivers. Professor Henry and other meteorologists have arrived at the conclusion, from a vast number of well-authenticated facts, that the absence of forest trees on the great prairies of the far West is due to the want of moisture, which is well known to prevail all along the eastern slope of the Rocky Mountains. The prevailing winds are now known to come from the west and northwest, and, as the currents of air laden with moisture from the Pacific ascend the western slope of the mountains, become condensed and deposit their burdens for the most part before reaching the eastern slope.

Professor Henry, in his paper on Climatology, contributed to the Patent Office Report for 1856, says: "The return westerly current, sweeping over the Pacific Ocean, and consequently charged with moisture, will impinge on the Coast Range of mountains of Oregon and California, and, in ascending its slopes, deposit moisture on the western declivity, giving fertility and a healthful climate to a narrow strip of country bordering on the ocean, and sterility to the eastern slope. All the moisture, however, will not be deposited in the passage over the first range, but a portion will be precipitated on the western side of the next, until it reaches the eastern elevated ridge of the Rocky Mountain system, when, we think, it will be nearly, if not quite, exhausted.' We are now supposing that the climatic conditions—winds, currents of air, &c., did not differ to any great extent during the Tertiary epoch from those which prevail in the same latitudes at the present day. We therefore venture the suggestion that up to the time of the accumulation of the Middle Tertiary deposits the lofty barrier of the Rocky Mountains did not exist.

WASHINGTON, D. C., January 20, 1861.

*See Memoir by F. B. Meek and F. V. Hayden in Proc. Phila. Acad., June, 1856. + Lindley's Vegetable Kingdom, p. 136.

62 I

REPORT

ON THE

YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK.

.

NORRIS, MICH., December 10, 1878.

SIR: I have the honor to submit the following report of my operations in the field during the season of 1878:

As soon as the appropriation for the Yellowstone National Park became available, I proceeded via Omaha and Ogden direct to Bozeman, Mont.

From Detroit, Mich., Mr. B. F. Bush, an early and enthusiastic member of the scientific association of that city, accompanied me as assistant at a mere nominal salary, purposing to remain in the park during the winter to keep a regular weather record, and explore and sketch its main wonders, at present but little known at that season of the year. In public meetings at both Virginia City and Bozeman I fully explained the boundaries, wonders, and necessities of the park; your rules and regulations and my plans for its protection and improvement; and was by the speakers, the resolutions, and press reports thereof sustained by unanimous pledges of earnest sympathy and support.

At Bozeman I rapidly outfitted for the park and reached it, 70 miles distant, in time to take observations of the there total eclipse of the sun, July 29, from a lofty, unexplored basaltic pinnacle of Sepulcher Mountain, as did Messrs. Bush and Bottler from the Cinnabar.

As stated in my preliminary report, the increasing probability that the hostile Bannocks would, like the Nez Percés of last year, raid the park from the west, induced me to defer the purposed erection of buildings at the Mammoth Hot Springs and seek to construct a road thence, connecting the entrance from Fort Ellis with that from Henry's Lake at the Lower Firehole Basin, for military as well as other purposes. A prudent regard for the safety of our limited appropriation also induced me to send back our official and other valuables to Bottlers', and to purchase but few animals, mainly hiring them with their owners at only trifling additional expense and no risk of loss.

I thus quickly organized a party of some 20 well armed, mounted, and equipped, resolute and reliable mountaineer laborers, and, with only one baggage-wagon, rapidly constructed a road three miles up the lofty Mammoth Hot Springs terraces, and through an excellent pass to the West Gardiner Valley.

From the summit of Sepulcher Mountain I had upon the day of the eclipse, with a field-glass, traced my route of 1875, along connecting branches of the Gardiner and the Gibbon, through a cañon nearly parallel with the Snowy Madison range. More easterly and nearly due south from my point of observation stretched the long, open, grassy valley of an unexplored branch of the Gardiner issuing from a deep cañon toward the towering cliffs of the Grand Cañon of the Gibbon, and far

away over and beyond the Firehole Basins and continental divide, the serried glistening crest of the Three Tetons high above the clouds.

Subsequent careful and long continued explorations of this route proved it, although difficult and dangerous of construction through several cañons and firehole basins, the most direct and practical one for a wagon road across the park.

As Barronette's party had left and Professor Hayden's not reached the park, we were doubtless for a time the only white men within or near it, requiring constant caution in scouting and labor, as well as in care of animals and making and guarding camp. Despite these annoyances, we crossed the terraces, rapidly bridged the first branch of the Gardiner, forded the next two branches, and ascended the last through a twomile cañon, and, with nearly a half mile of bridge and causeway, crossed the foot of Beaver Lake.

Obsidian there rises like basalt in vertical columns many hundreds of feet high, and countless huge masses had fallen from this utterly impassable mountain into the hissing hot-spring margin of an equally impassable lake, without either Indian or game trail over the glistering fragments of nature's glass, sure to severely lacerate. As this glass barricade sloped from some 200 or 300 feet high against the cliff at an angle of some 45° to the lake, we-with the slivered fragments of timber thrown from the heights-with huge fires, heated and expanded, and then, men well screened by blankets held by others, by dashing cold water, suddenly cooled and fractured the large masses. Then with huge levers, steel bars, sledge, pick, and shovels, and severe laceration of at least the hands and faces of every member of the party, we rolled, slid, crushed. and shoveled one-fourth of a mile of good wagon-road midway along the slope; it being, so far as I am aware, the only road of native glass upon the continent.

Then, by a full mile of grade, we flanked Beaver Lake, skirted a dashing rivulet of green alum-water, through a fine pass, and beside a lone lake in a forest of dense pines to the lovely valley of an unknown fork of the Gibbon, descended this to, and three miles through, an unexplored but extremely active and interesting firehole region, and skirting another near the second falls and cañon to the wild-flax and clover-covered parkbed of an ancient lake, to the head of the Grand Cañon of the Gibbon.

Thence, without the guide of even a game-trail, by immense labor, and twice crossing the stream, we for some four miles traversed its cañon, nearly a half mile deep. We then emerged through an ancient channel, and skirted the very brink of a precipice nearly a thousand feet above the 80-foot falls and foaming rapids, and six miles of open pine-clad terraces to Howard's road from Henry's Lake, an estimated distance of 45 miles from the Mammoth Hot Springs, mainly through a region heretofore totally unexplored; then 15 miles farther through the Lower Firehole and midway to the upper geysers, our wagon being the first to make a track along the Upper Firehole River.

We joyfully met the Gannett and Holmes party of Professor Hayden's geological surveying expedition at the lower geysers-the professor himself at the upper, and between them the various members of his Wilson party straggling in afoot and exhausted after loss of their animals and other outfit by the Indians near Henry's Lake.

It was truly a pleasant and fortunate meeting for all parties, after more than a month of hazardous mountain climbing and isolation from the outside world and each other; and amid abundant evidence of surrounding Indians, we for days pressed our various duties within supporting distance of each other.