Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 9.djvu/411

From Youth to Age As An American. 383 miles to the leeward this depression was bordered by a line of sand dunes, unquestionably formed from sands blown from the bed of the lake that once occupied the whole of this depres- sion. It is the blowing- out of this sediment which exposes the fossils buried in the depths of the old lake. * * * Judging from the uniformity of its surroundings one is found unavoidably thinking of an extensive lake sediment, of which this fossil lake is only a very small portion. The orig- inal Pliocene lake probably included Silver Lake and Klamath Marsh with its surroundings, and perhaps Summer Lake and an extension eastward over the present Harney and Malheur lake regions. These w^aters were low^ered to their present level by evaporation in excess of inflow. The mineral left behind accumulated until it covered the face of the pond like snow. * "Besides this extensive Pliocene lake already mentioned, there are, fronting on Snake River, a series of terraces, frag- ments of a continuous lake-bed from which the writer has received fresh-water fossils. Among these a small pastern bone of a horse was found, establishing the claim of the beds as Pliocene. "The fossils of these Silver Lake beds were found often lying on the surface, bare of any covering. The sands and dust that had covered them were blown to the leeward where they lay in extended dunes, and this uncovering and drifting process w^as still visibly going on. Among these fossils we found many arrowheads of obsidian, such as were used by recent Indians." This is the only allusion to native life Professor Condon makes while reading the geological history of Oregon from most original records and its use commended to our fellow citizens east of the Rockies. They may go far wrong if they assume that because 105 inches of rain may have fallen within one year in the Tillamook gap of the Coast Range, that it has any effect on the river system of Oregon ; only one small river being affected ; and there is yet no reason to fear the effect of our rains anywhere. As an old citizen of Oregon, from the office of the State Board of Horticulture, I gave my reasons ten years ago for opposing the initiation of the forest reserve system for the reasons assigned by the evidence drawn from the National Academy of Science, because it recom- mended imperial methods on unsustained assumptions and