42° north latitude, thus occupying nine and onehalf degrees of latitude. The most westerly point in California is Cape Mendocino with 124° 26' of west longitude: the most easterly point is in San Bernardino County, in an eastward bend of the Colorado River, with 114° 9′ of west longitude. Therefore, if extremes of latitude and longitude were alone considered, California might claim to be 9.5 x 10.15 degrees dimensions, but the east and west boundaries. of the State do not run north and south, as such calculation would require. California is cut approximately on the bias, or obliquely, between these extremes. The northeast portion of such a square as parallel boundaries would inclose comprises the state of Nevada, while the southwest portion is occupied by the Pacific Ocean. The greatest width of California is a line drawn from Point Conception in Santa Barbara County eastward to the point of least longitude in San Bernardino County (noted above) and the distance is 235 miles. The least width of the State is a line drawn eastward from the Golden Gate to the south end of Lake Tahoe in the Sierra Nevada (which is bisected by the State boundary line), the distance being 148 miles. The average width of the State is, therefore, 191 miles. Its length calculated on its stretch of latitude is 6601 statute miles, but owing to its oblique extension between its parallels of latitude, its actual length, in an air line drawn from its northwest to southeast corners, is 775 miles, and its coast line, following indentations therein, is 1200 miles. The coast line of Cali

fornia constitutes approximately two-thirds of the national boundary of the continental United States on the Pacific Ocean exclusive, of course, of Alaska.

Disregarding the obliqueness of California, it is usual to designate the boundaries of the State as follows: on the north, the state of Oregon; on the east, the states of Nevada and Arizona from the latter of which it is separated by the Colorado River; on the south, Mexico; on the west, the Pacific Ocean. It is the western environment of California which is overwhelmingly important. The Pacific Ocean is the dominating factor in determining the climate of the State: it is, in historical and economic ways, also the father of the State and it will be the architect of the future of California, not only in its own development and its relations to national integrity of the United States, but in its service to the world as the front line of occidental civilization and enlightenment.

California is most eligibly situated and naturally endowed to discharge this world duty, for her frontage on the Pacific Ocean includes two natural landlocked harbors in the bays of San Diego and San Francisco, the latter being popularly estimated to have capacity enough to hold at anchor all the oceancrossing craft, both naval and merchant marine, of all Pacific border countries. Government engineers have also given California a third safe harbor at San Pedro (Los Angeles) and several other indentations of the coast line are available for harbor improvement. The coast line of California lies but a few

hundred miles east of the great circle route from the Panama Canal to the chief Asiatic ports and has the natural ports of call for all ships which will be engaged in the vast future traffic between the two hemispheres via Panama. However, to embrace her geographical opportunity to act as an adequate American factor in homologizing the two great eastward and westward moving civilizations, which must be accomplished on the shores of the Pacific Ocean, California must advance to ten or twenty fold her present development in population, industry, learning and the humanistic arts and sciences. It will be one of the purposes of this writing to demonstrate that California has the natural endowments, the capability and the lofty purpose to justify her tenancy of such a place and to discharge such a function on the earth.

THE STRUCTURAL GEOLOGY

From the point of view of geology, California, and adjacent Pacific Coast territory of course, is a new country as compared with the area from the Rocky Mountains eastward, as formations conceded to be most ancient and preceding the appearance of life on the planet are not widely discernible. Although the most ancient tokens of earth structure are not abundant and must be intelligently sought for, the Pacific Coast is very rich in records of more recent geologic time. As has been picturesquely said, "The history of the relatively recent periods, of the geo

logic yesterday, is written in more detail than elsewhere in the world. It treats of marine, terrestrial and glacial conditions: of the base-leveling of mountain ranges followed by vulcanism, earth movements and the re-birth of mountain systems." For what is, therefore, rare in California of the uplift of primeval rocks that have entered into the visible structure of older parts of the continent, there is compensation in the greater extent and variety of geologic action in later periods which these older parts have not so richly experienced, or, at least, of which they do not present to the trained vision such clear and complete record.

Eons ago, in times which geologists call "tertiary" because two great geologic epochs preceded them (and furnished materials visible in the structure of the Atlantic side of the continent), there arose from the primordial world-spread of waters on what is now the Pacific Coast, ridges of earth-crust lifting above the flood the sediments which had for millions of years been collecting beneath it. These ridges separated the waters on the east from those on the west and created an ancient inland sea which has been called the "Great Basin Sea," covering the vast region lying west of the Rocky Mountains and which was designated the "Great American Desert" on the United States maps of more than half a century ago. These first uplifts of the earth-crust were not the mountain ranges of California as we now know them but were in a way progenitors of them. Upon their eastern sides lashed the waters of the Great

Basin Sea and on their west rolled the waves of the primeval sea which was in a way the progenitor of the Pacific Ocean. These waters and the clouddeluges that drained into them scoured from the ascending ridges the sediment which they brought up, depositing it to a depth of thousands of feet in the depressions the uprising ridges left undisturbed. However, this first effort of the earth-crust to form a California was a failure. In the course of geologic time its uplifts were again submerged, carrying beneath the primeval flood its shallow river-beds to be buried under renewed sedimentation. After a few more millions of years, the earth-crust made a new effort. The Great Basin Sea was drawn off toward the north. The most potent creative agencies were invoked. By a stupendous uplift the Sierra Nevada arose, carrying thousands of feet aloft the old streambeds and other tokens of the primitive land which failed. Volcanoes broke out, raised high cones to form great mountains and to spread lava crusts of great depth over thousands of square miles. Then came new upward movement carrying the Sierra Nevada much higher than at present, and the local occurrence of the ice age. Glaciers ground down the igneous rocks that had arisen and cut deep gorges in which ran new rivers carrying new depths of sediment to form broader valleys between and around the mountains. The Sierra Nevada was ice-clothed. The Coast Range had many of the growing-pains of the Sierra Nevada but in less degree. Later an era of subsidence dropped the coast region of the State