ENHS Nature Trails April 2004 Article 2

President's Column: "Geology Book Review"
by David Wagner

Last fall Dave Stone, ENHS member and long-time conservation chair of Lane County Audubon Society (LCAS), showed me a beautiful book. He had been sent the book to review for the LCAS newsletter, but since it was a book on geology, Dave thought it would be better suited to Nature Trails. I agreed and took the book home.

The first page I looked at, randomly opening the book near the beginning, had a picture of a plant fossil with the legend, "An early relative of rushes and sedges, Phyllotheca grew in Carboniferous wetlands."

"Harumph!" I said to myself, and looked in the text for a possible explanation. There it said, "The plant fossils at Spotted Ridge include horsetail rushes as well as a type of early sedge known as Phyllotheca."

"Harrrummmph!" I said again. This is a serious error. Phyllotheca is a type of early horsetail, not a type of early sedge. To say it is a type of early sedge is kind of like saying a paleozoic salamander is a type of early walrus. The source of the botanical confusion is in the same sentence, though. The author mentioned horsetail rushes. We all know rushes and sedges are related and if a horsetail can be a rush, couldn't a horsetail relative be a sedge? This is a prime example of the traps one can fall into when using common names. A horsetail rush is not a rush, it is a horsetail. It would be better if it were called a rush horsetail. But the truth is we usually call it a scouring rush.

With another "harrummph" I set the book aside. I hate to criticize the work of others because I am so sensitive to people criticizing my own work. This character trait kept me from handling the book review obligation expeditiously but the outcome is not bad. I have gone leisurely through the book, In Search of Ancient Oregon by Ellen Morris Bishop, enjoying the pleasures it has to offer. I found no other errors of science but lots of good information presented in a clear manner. And lots of beautiful pictures.

It is the pictures that will sell this book. Ellen Bishop has traveled throughout the state, often hiking with her dog (see her even more recently published book, Best Hikes with Dogs: Oregon), taking pictures of geological features. Her geological acumen is what guided her selection of sites to photograph and her photography skills are what make the book beautiful. The pictures are simply stunning; this could be on anybody's coffee table for guests to enjoy just leafing through for the pleasure of beauty.

The book's material is presented as a geological history of Oregon. The material is divided into thirteen chapters, twelve dealing with a particular geological era or time period. The amount of time covered in each chapter is approximately relative to the importance of rocks of that age in Oregon's landscape. Thus, one chapter suffices for the entire Paleozoic Era while the Miocene period, when basalt eruptions covered the majority of Oregon and sandwiched our most famous fossil beds, is divided into two chapters.

The obvious benchmark to which Bishop's book is to be compared is Geology of Oregon (5th edition, 1999) by Bill and Liz Orr. The books fill different niches so that a direct comparison is kind of like comparing apples and oranges. The classic Geology, first edition originally authored by Ewart Baldwin 1964, takes a more theoretical, technical approach. It is an ideal textbook for an introductory class in geology, featuring block diagrams, stratigraphy tables, sketches of fossils, and black and white photos of geological features. Its strong point is the excellence of the block diagrams in showing how Oregon's landscape came to be the way it is. Bishop's book, on the other hand, tells by narrative how the landscape came to be and its illustrative emphasis is showing what that landscape looks like today. The Orrs' book is a textbook, Bishop's book is a natural history treatise for the generalist and armchair traveler.

The details: In Search of Ancient Oregon: A Geological and Natural History by Ellen Morris Bishop. 2003. Timber Press, Portland. Hardcover. ISBN 0-88192-590-X List $39.95 (offered on www.amazon.com @ $29.97).

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