ON THE FORMATIONS OF THE PAMPAS

Geological Observations on South America by Charles Darwin, is part of the HackerNoon Books Series. You can jump to any chapter in this book here. ON THE FORMATIONS OF THE PAMPAS

ON THE FORMATIONS OF THE PAMPAS.

Mineralogical constitution.—Microscopical structure.—Buenos Ayres, shells embedded in tosca-rock.—Buenos Ayres to the Colorado.—San Ventana.—Bahia Blanca; M. Hermoso, bones and infusoria of; P. Alta, shells, bones and infusoria of; co-existence of the recent shells and extinct mammifers.—Buenos Ayres to Santa Fé.—Skeletons of Mastodon.—Infusoria.—Inferior marine tertiary strata, their age.—Horse’s tooth.—BANDA ORIENTAL.—Superficial Pampean formation.—Inferior tertiary strata, variation of, connected with volcanic action; Macrauchenia Patachonica at San Julian in Patagonia, age of, subsequent to living mollusca and to the erratic block period. SUMMARY.—Area of Pampean formation.—Theories of origin.—Source of sediment.—Estuary origin.—Contemporaneous with existing mollusca.—Relations to underlying tertiary strata.—Ancient deposit of estuary origin.—Elevation and successive deposition of the Pampean formation.—Number and state of the remains of mammifers; their habitation, food, extinction, and range.—Conclusion.—Localities in Pampas at which mammiferous remains have been found.

The Pampean formation is highly interesting from its vast extent, its disputed origin, and from the number of extinct gigantic mammifers embedded in it. It has upon the whole a very uniform character: consisting of a more or less dull reddish, slightly indurated, argillaceous earth or mud, often, but not always, including in horizontal lines concretions of marl, and frequently passing into a compact marly rock. The mud, wherever I examined it, even close to the concretions, did not contain any carbonate of lime. The concretions are generally nodular, sometimes rough externally, sometimes stalactiformed; they are of a compact structure, but often penetrated (as well as the mud) by hair-like serpentine cavities, and occasionally with irregular fissures in their centres, lined with minute crystals of carbonate of lime; they are of white, brown, or pale pinkish tints, often marked by black dendritic manganese or iron; they are either darker or lighter tinted than the surrounding mass; they contain much carbonate of lime, but exhale a strong aluminous odour, and leave, when dissolved in acids, a large but varying residue, of which the greater part consists of sand. These concretions often unite into irregular strata; and over very large tracts of country, the entire mass consists of a hard, but generally cavernous marly rock: some of the varieties might be called calcareous tuffs.

Dr. Carpenter has kindly examined under the microscope, sliced and polished specimens of these concretions, and of the solid marl-rock, collected in various places between the Colorado and Santa Fe Bajada. In the greater number, Dr. Carpenter finds that the whole substance presents a tolerably uniform amorphous character, but with traces of incipient crystalline metamorphosis; in other specimens he finds microscopically minute rounded concretions of an amorphous substance (resembling in size those in oolitic rocks, but not having a concentric structure), united by a cement which is often crystalline. In some, Dr. Carpenter can perceive distinct traces of shells, corals, Polythalamia, and rarely of spongoid bodies. For the sake of comparison, I sent Dr. Carpenter specimens of the calcareous rock, formed chiefly of fragments of recent shells, from Coquimbo in Chile: in one of these specimens, Dr. Carpenter finds, besides the larger fragments, microscopical particles of shells, and a varying quantity of opaque amorphous matter; in another specimen from the same bed, he finds the whole composed of the amorphous matter, with layers showing indications of an incipient crystalline metamorphosis: hence these latter specimens, both in external appearance and in microscopical structure, closely resemble those of the Pampas. Dr. Carpenter informs me that it is well known that chemical precipitation throws down carbonate of lime in the opaque amorphous state; and he is inclined to believe that the long-continued attrition of a calcareous body in a state of crystalline or semi-crystalline aggregation (as, for instance, in the ordinary shells of Mollusca, which, when sliced, are transparent) may yield the same result. From the intimate relations between all the Coquimbo specimens, I can hardly doubt that the amorphous carbonate of lime in them has resulted from the attrition and decay of the larger fragments of shell: whether the amorphous matter in the marly rocks of the Pampas has likewise thus originated, it would be hazardous to conjecture.

For convenience’ sake, I will call the marly rock by the name given to it by the inhabitants, namely, Tosca-rock; and the reddish argillaceous earth, Pampean mud. This latter substance, I may mention, has been examined for me by Professor Ehrenberg, and the result of his examination will be given under the proper localities.

I will commence my descriptions at a central spot, namely, at Buenos Ayres, and thence proceed first southward to the extreme limit of the deposit, and afterwards northward. The plain on which Buenos Ayres stands is from thirty to forty feet in height. The Pampean mud is here of a rather pale colour, and includes small nearly white nodules, and other irregular strata of an unusually arenaceous variety of tosca-rock. In a well at the depth of seventy feet, according to Ignatio Nunez, much tosca-rock was met with, and at several points, at one hundred feet deep, beds of sand have been found. I have already given a list of the recent marine and estuary shells found in many parts on the surface near Buenos Ayres, as far as three or four leagues from the Plata. Specimens from near Ensenada, given me by Sir W. Parish, where the rock is quarried just beneath the surface of the plain, consist of broken bivalves, cemented by and converted into white crystalline carbonate of lime. I have already alluded, in the first chapter, to a specimen (also given me by Sir W. Parish) from the A. del Tristan, in which shells, resembling in every respect the Azara labiata, d’Orbigny, as far as their worn condition permits of comparison, are embedded in a reddish, softish, somewhat arenaceous marly rock: after careful comparison, with the aid of a microscope and acids, I can perceive no difference between the basis of this rock and the specimens collected by me in many parts of the Pampas. I have also stated, on the authority of Sir W. Parish, that northward of Buenos Ayres, on the highest parts of the plain, about forty feet above the Plata, and two or three miles from it, numerous shells of the Azara labiata (and I believe of Venus sinuosa) occur embedded in a stratified earthy mass, including small marly concretions, and said to be precisely like the great Pampean deposit. Hence we may conclude that the mud of the Pampas continued to be deposited to within the period of this existing estuary shell. Although this formation is of such immense extent, I know of no other instance of the presence of shells in it.

BUENOS AYRES TO THE RIO COLORADO.

With the exception of a few metamorphic ridges, the country between these two points, a distance of 400 geographical miles, belongs to the Pampean formation, and in the southern part is generally formed of the harder and more calcareous varieties. I will briefly describe my route: about twenty- five miles S.S.W. of the capital, in a well forty yards in depth, the upper part, and, as I was assured, the entire thickness, was formed of dark red Pampean mud without concretions. North of the River Salado, there are many lakes; and on the banks of one (near the Guardia) there was a little cliff similarly composed, but including many nodular and stalactiform concretions: I found here a large piece of tessellated armour, like that of the Glyptodon, and many fragments of bones. The cliffs on the Salado consist of pale-coloured Pampean mud, including and passing into great masses of tosca-rock: here a skeleton of the Megatherium and the bones of other extinct quadrupeds (see the list at the end of this chapter) were found. Large quantities of crystallised gypsum (of which specimens were given me) occur in the cliffs of this river; and likewise (as I was assured by Mr. Lumb) in the Pampean mud on the River Chuelo, seven leagues from Buenos Ayres: I mention this because M. d’Orbigny lays some stress on the supposed absence of this mineral in the Pampean formation.

Southward of the Salado the country is low and swampy, with tosca-rock appearing at long intervals at the surface. On the banks, however, of the Tapalguen (sixty miles south of the Salado) there is a large extent of tosca-rock, some highly compact and even semi-crystalline, overlying pale Pampean mud with the usual concretions. Thirty miles further south, the small quartz-ridge of Tapalguen is fringed on its northern and southern flank, by little, narrow, flat-topped hills of tosca-rock, which stand higher than the surrounding plain. Between this ridge and the Sierra of Guitru-gueyu, a distance of sixty miles, the country is swampy, with the tosca-rock appearing only in four or five spots: this sierra, precisely like that of Tapalguen, is bordered by horizontal, often cliff-bounded, little hills of tosca-rock, higher than the surrounding plain. Here, also, a new appearance was presented in some extensive and level banks of alluvium or detritus of the neighbouring metamorphic rocks; but I neglected to observe whether it was stratified or not. Between Guitru-gueyu and the Sierra Ventana, I crossed a dry plain of tosca-rock higher than the country hitherto passed over, and with small pieces of denuded tableland of the same formation, standing still higher.

The marly or calcareous beds not only come up nearly horizontally to the northern and southern foot of the great quartzose mountains of the Sierra Ventana, but interfold between the parallel ranges. The superficial beds (for I nowhere obtained sections more than twenty feet deep) retain, even close to the mountains, their usual character: the uppermost layer, however, in one place included pebbles of quartz, and rested on a mass of detritus of the same rock. At the very foot of the mountains, there were some few piles of quartz and tosca-rock detritus, including land-shells; but at the distance of only half a mile from these lofty, jagged, and battered mountains, I could not, to my great surprise, find on the boundless surface of the calcareous plain even a single pebble. Quartz- pebbles, however, of considerable size have at some period been transported to a distance of between forty and fifty miles to the shores of Bahia Blanca. (Schmidtmeyer “Travels in Chile” page 150, states that he first noticed on the Pampas, very small bits of red granite, when fifty miles distant from the southern extremity of the mountains of Cordova, which project on the plain, like a reef into the sea.)

The highest peak of the St. Ventana is, by Captain Fitzroy’s measurement, 3,340 feet, and the calcareous plain at its foot (from observations taken by some Spanish officers) 840 feet above the sea-level. (“La Plata” etc. by Sir W. Parish page 146.) On the flanks of the mountains, at a height of three hundred or four hundred feet above the plain, there were a few small patches of conglomerate and breccia, firmly cemented by ferruginous matter to the abrupt and battered face of the quartz—traces being thus exhibited of ancient sea-action. The high plain round this range sinks quite insensibly to the eye on all sides, except to the north, where its surface is broken into low cliffs. Round the Sierras Tapalguen, Guitru-gueyu, and between the latter and the Ventana we have seen (and shall hereafter see round some hills in Banda Oriental), that the tosca-rock forms low, flat- topped, cliff-bounded hills, higher than the surrounding plains of similar composition. From the horizontal stratification and from the appearance of the broken cliffs, the greater height of the Pampean formation round these primary hills ought not to be altogether or in chief part attributed to these several points having been uplifted more energetically than the surrounding country, but to the argillaceo-calcareous mud having collected round them, when they existed as islets or submarine rocks, at a greater height, than at the bottom of the adjoining open sea;—the cliffs having been subsequently worn during the elevation of the whole country in mass.

Southward of the Ventana, the plain extends farther than the eye can range; its surface is not very level, having slight depressions with no drainage exits; it is generally covered by a few feet in thickness of sandy earth; and in some places, according to M. Parchappe, by beds of clay two yards thick. (M. d’Orbigny “Voyage” Part Geolog. pages 47, 48.) On the banks of the Sauce, four leagues S.E. of the Ventana, there is an imperfect section about two hundred feet in height, displaying in the upper part tosca-rock and in the lower part red Pampean mud. At the settlement of Bahia Blanca, the uppermost plain is composed of very compact, stratified tosca-rock, containing rounded grains of quartz distinguishable by the naked eye: the lower plain, on which the fortress stands, is described by M. Parchappe as composed of solid tosca-rock (Ibid.); but the sections which I examined appeared more like a redeposited mass of this rock, with small pebbles and fragments of quartz. I shall immediately return to the important sections on the shores of Bahia Blanca. Twenty miles southward of this place, there is a remarkable ridge extending W. by N. and E. by S., formed of small, separate, flat-topped, steep-sided hills, rising between one hundred and two hundred feet above the Pampean plain at its southern base, which plain is a little lower than that to the north. The uppermost stratum in this ridge consists of pale, highly calcareous, compact tosca-rock, resting (as seen in one place) on reddish Pampean mud, and this again on a paler kind: at the foot of the ridge, there is a well in reddish clay or mud. I have seen no other instance of a chain of hills belonging to the Pampean formation; and as the strata show no signs of disturbance, and as the direction of the ridge is the same with that common to all the metamorphic lines in this whole area, I suspect that the Pampean sediment has in this instance been accumulated on and over a ridge of hard rocks, instead of, as in the case of the above-mentioned Sierras, round their submarine flanks. South of this little chain of tosca-rock, a plain of Pampean mud declines towards the banks of the Colorado: in the middle a well has been dug in red Pampean mud, covered by two feet of white, softish, highly calcareous tosca-rock, over which lies sand with small pebbles three feet in thickness—the first appearance of that vast shingle formation described in the First Chapter. In the first section after crossing the Colorado, an old tertiary formation, namely, the Rio Negro sandstone (to be described in the next chapter), is met with: but from the accounts given me by the Gauchos, I believe that at the mouth of the Colorado the Pampean formation extends a little further southwards.

BAHIA BLANCA.

To return to the shores of this bay. At Monte Hermoso there is a good section, about one hundred feet in height, of four distinct strata, appearing to the eye horizontal, but thickening a little towards the N.W. The uppermost bed, about twenty feet in thickness, consists of obliquely laminated, soft sandstone, including many pebbles of quartz, and falling at the surface into loose sand. The second bed, only six inches thick, is a hard, dark-coloured sandstone. The third bed is pale-coloured Pampean mud; and the fourth is of the same nature, but darker coloured, including in its lower part horizontal layers and lines of concretions of not very compact pinkish tosca-rock. The bottom of the sea, I may remark, to a distance of several miles from the shore, and to a depth of between sixty and one hundred feet, was found by the anchors to be composed of tosca-rock and reddish Pampean mud. Professor Ehrenberg has examined for me specimens of the two lower beds, and finds in them three Polygastrica and six Phytolitharia.

(The following list is given in the “Monatsberichten der konig. Akad. zu Berlin” April 1845:— POLYGASTRICA. Fragilaria rhabdosoma. Gallionella distans. Pinnularia?

PHYTOLITHARIA. Lithodontium Bursa. Lithodontium furcatum. Lithostylidium exesum. Lithostylidium rude. Lithostylidium Serra. Spongolithis Fustis?)

Of these, only one (Spongolithis Fustis?) is a marine form; five of them are identical with microscopical structures of brackish-water origin, hereafter to be mentioned, which form a central point in the Pampean formation. In these two beds, especially in the lower one, bones of extinct mammifers, some embedded in their proper relative positions and others single, are very numerous in a small extent of the cliffs. These remains consist of, first, the head of Ctenomys antiquus, allied to the living Ctenomys Braziliensis; secondly, a fragment of the remains of a rodent; thirdly, molar teeth and other bones of a large rodent, closely allied to, but distinct from, the existing species of Hydrochoerus, and therefore probably an inhabitant of fresh water; fourth and fifthly, portions of vertebrae, limbs, ribs, and other bones of two rodents; sixthly, bones of the extremities of some great megatheroid quadruped. (See “Fossil Mammalia” page 109 by Professor Owen, in the “Zoology of the Voyage of the ‘Beagle’;” and Catalogue page 36 of Fossil Remains in Museum of Royal College of Surgeons.) The number of the remains of rodents gives to this collection a peculiar character, compared with those found in any other locality. All these bones are compact and heavy; many of them are stained red, with their surfaces polished; some of the smaller ones are as black as jet.

Monte Hermoso is between fifty and sixty miles distant in a S.E. line from the Ventana, with the intermediate country gently rising towards it, and all consisting of the Pampean formation. What relation, then, do these beds, at the level of the sea and under it, bear to those on the flanks of the Ventana, at the height of 840 feet, and on the flanks of the other neighbouring sierras, which, from the reasons already assigned, do not appear to owe their greater height to unequal elevation? When the tosca- rock was accumulating round the Ventana, and when, with the exception of a few small rugged primary islands, the whole wide surrounding plains must have been under water, were the strata at Monte Hermoso depositing at the bottom of a great open sea, between eight hundred and one thousand feet in depth? I much doubt this; for if so, the almost perfect carcasses of the several small rodents, the remains of which are so very numerous in so limited a space, must have been drifted to this spot from the distance of many hundred miles. It appears to me far more probable, that during the Pampean period this whole area had commenced slowly rising (and in the cliffs, at several different heights we have proofs of the land having been exposed to sea-action at several levels), and that tracts of land had thus been formed of Pampean sediment round the Ventana and the other primary ranges, on which the several rodents and other quadrupeds lived, and that a stream (in which perhaps the extinct aquatic Hydrochoerus lived) drifted their bodies into the adjoining sea, into which the Pampean mud continued to be poured from the north. As the land continued to rise, it appears that this source of sediment was cut off; and in its place sand and pebbles were borne down by stronger currents, and conformably deposited over the Pampean strata.

(FIGURE 15. SECTION OF BEDS WITH RECENT SHELLS AND EXTINCT MAMMIFERS, AT PUNTA ALTA IN BAHIA BLANCA. (Showing beds from bottom to top: A, B, C, D.))

Punta Alta is situated about thirty miles higher up on the northern side of this same bay: it consists of a small plain, between twenty and thirty feet in height, cut off on the shore by a line of low cliffs about a mile in length, represented in Figure 15 with its vertical scale necessarily exaggerated. The lower bed (A) is more extensive than the upper ones; it consists of stratified gravel or conglomerate, cemented by calcareo- arenaceous matter, and is divided by curvilinear layers of pinkish marl, of which some are precisely like tosca-rock, and some more sandy. The beds are curvilinear, owing to the action of currents, and dip in different directions; they include an extraordinary number of bones of gigantic mammifers and many shells. The pebbles are of considerable size, and are of hard sandstone, and of quartz, like that of the Ventana: there are also a few well-rounded masses of tosca-rock.

The second bed B is about fifteen feet in thickness, but towards both extremities of the cliff (not included in the diagram) it either thins out and dies away, or passes insensibly into an overlying bed of gravel. It consists of red, tough clayey mud, with minute linear cavities; it is marked with faint horizontal shades of colour; it includes a few pebbles, and rarely a minute particle of shell: in one spot, the dermal armour and a few bones of a Dasypoid quadruped were embedded in it: it fills up furrows in the underlying gravel. With the exception of the few pebbles and particles of shells, this bed resembles the true Pampean mud; but it still more closely resembles the clayey flats (mentioned in the First Chapter) separating the successively rising parallel ranges of sand-dunes.

The bed C is of stratified gravel, like the lowest one; it fills up furrows in the underlying red mud, and is sometimes interstratified with it, and sometimes insensibly passes into it; as the red mud thins out, this upper gravel thickens. Shells are more numerous in it than in the lower gravel; but the bones, though some are still present, are less numerous. In one part, however, where this gravel and the red mud passed into each other, I found several bones and a tolerably perfect head of the Megatherium. Some of the large Volutas, though embedded in the gravel-bed C, were filled with the red mud, including great numbers of the little recent Paludestrina australis. These three lower beds are covered by an unconformable mantle D of stratified sandy earth, including many pebbles of quartz, pumice and phonolite, land and sea-shells.

M. d’Orbigny has been so obliging as to name for me the twenty species of Mollusca embedded in the two gravel beds: they consist of:—

1. Volutella angulata, d’Orbigny, “Voyage” Mollusq. and Pal. 2. Voluta Braziliana, Sol 3. Olicancilleria Braziliensis d’Orbigny. 4. Olicancilleria auricularia, d’Orbigny. 5. Olivina puelchana, d’Orbigny. 6. Buccinanops cochlidium, d’Orbigny. 7. Buccinanops globulosum, d’Orbigny. 8. Colombella sertulariarum, d’Orbigny. 9. Trochus Patagonicus, and var. of ditto, d’Orbigny. 10. Paludestrina Australis, d’Orbigny. 11. Fissurella Patagonica, d’Orbigny. 12. Crepidula muricata, Lam. 13. Venus purpurata, Lam. 14. Venus rostrata, Phillippi. 15. Mytilus Darwinianus, d’Orbigny. 16. Nucula semiornata, d’Orbigny. 17. Cardita Patagonica, d’Orbigny. 18. Corbula Patagonica (?), d’Orbigny. 19. Pecten tethuelchus, d’Orbigny. 20. Ostrea puelchana, d’Orbigny. 21. A living species of Balanus. 22 and 23. An Astrae and encrusting Flustra, apparently identical with species now living in the bay.

All these shells now live on this coast, and most of them in this same bay. I was also struck with the fact, that the proportional numbers of the different kinds appeared to be the same with those now cast up on the beach: in both cases specimens of Voluta, Crepidula, Venus, and Trochus are the most abundant. Four or five of the species are the same with the upraised shells on the Pampas near Buenos Ayres. All the specimens have a very ancient and bleached appearance, and do not emit, when heated, an animal odour: some of them are changed throughout into a white, soft, fibrous substance; others have the space between the external walls, either hollow, or filled up with crystalline carbonate of lime. (A Bulinus, mentioned in the Introduction to the “Fossil Mammalia” in the “Zoology of the Voyage of the ‘Beagle’” has so much fresher an appearance, than the marine species, that I suspect it must have fallen amongst the others, and been collected by mistake.)

The remains of the extinct mammiferous animals, from the two gravel beds have been described by Professor Owen in the “Zoology of the Voyage of the ‘Beagle’:” they consist of, 1st, one nearly perfect head and three fragments of heads of the Megatherium Cuvierii; 2nd, a lower jaw of Megalonyx Jeffersonii; 3rd, lower jaw of Mylodon Darwinii; 4th, fragments of a head of some gigantic Edental quadruped; 5th, an almost entire skeleton of the great Scelidotherium leptocephalum, with most of the bones, including the head, vertebrae, ribs, some of the extremities to the claw- bone, and even, as remarked by Professor Owen, the knee-cap, all nearly in their proper relative positions; 6th, fragments of the jaw and a separate tooth of a Toxodon, belonging either to T. Platensis, or to a second species lately discovered near Buenos Ayres; 7th, a tooth of Equus curvidens; 8th, tooth of a Pachyderm, closely allied to Palaeotherium, of which parts of the head have been lately sent from Buenos Ayres to the British Museum; in all probability this pachyderm is identical with the Macrauchenia Patagonica from Port S. Julian, hereafter to be referred to. Lastly, and 9thly, in a cliff of the red clayey bed B, there was a double piece, about three feet long and two wide, of the bony armour of a large Dasypoid quadruped, with the two sides pressed nearly close together: as the cliff is now rapidly washing away, this fossil probably was lately much more perfect; from between its doubled-up sides, I extracted the middle and ungual phalanges, united together, of one of the feet, and likewise a separate phalanx: hence one or more of the limbs must have been attached to the dermal case, when it was embedded. Besides these several remains in a distinguishable condition, there were very many single bones: the greater number were embedded in a space 200 yards square. The preponderance of the Edental quadrupeds is remarkable; as is, in contrast with the beds of Monte Hermoso, the absence of Rodents. Most of the bones are now in a soft and friable condition, and, like the shells, do not emit when burnt an animal odour. The decayed state of the bones may be partly owing to their late exposure to the air and tidal-waves. Barnacles, Serpulae, and corallines are attached to many of the bones, but I neglected to observe whether these might not have grown on them since being exposed to the present tidal action (After having packed up my specimens at Bahia Blanca, this point occurred to me, and I noted it; but forgot it on my return, until the remains had been cleaned and oiled: my attention has been lately called to the subject by some remarks by M. d’Orbigny.); but I believe that some of the barnacles must have grown on the Scelidotherium, soon after being deposited, and before being WHOLLY covered up by the gravel. Besides the remains in the condition here described, I found one single fragment of bone very much rolled, and as black as jet, so as perfectly to resemble some of the remains from Monte Hermoso.

Very many of the bones had been broken, abraded, and rolled, before being embedded. Others, even some of those included in the coarsest parts of the the now hard conglomerate, still retain all their minutest prominences perfectly preserved; so that I conclude that they probably were protected by skin, flesh, or ligaments, whilst being covered up. In the case of the Scelidotherium, it is quite certain that the whole skeleton was held together by its ligaments, when deposited in the gravel in which I found it. Some cervical vertebrae and a humerus of corresponding size lay so close together, as did some ribs and the bones of a leg, that I thought that they must originally have belonged to two skeletons, and not have been washed in single; but as remains were here very numerous, I will not lay much stress on these two cases. We have just seen that the armour of the Dasypoid quadruped was certainly embedded together with some of the bones of the feet.

Professor Ehrenberg has examined for me specimens of the finer matter from in contact with these mammiferous remains: he finds in them two Polygastrica, decidedly marine forms; and six Phytolitharia, of which one is probably marine, and the others either of fresh-water or terrestrial origin. (“Monatsberichten der Akad. zu Berlin” April 1845. The list consists of:—

POLYGASTRICA. Gallionella sulcata. Stauroptera aspera? fragm.

PHYTOLITHARIA. Lithasteriscus tuberculatus. Lithostylidium Clepsammidium. Lithostylidium quadratum. Lithostylidium rude. Lithostylidium unidentatum. Spongolithis acicularis.)

Only one of these eight microscopical bodies is common to the nine from Monte Hermoso: but five of them are in common with those from the Pampean mud on the banks of the Parana. The presence of any fresh-water infusoria, considering the aridity of the surrounding country, is here remarkable: the most probable explanation appears to be, that these microscopical organisms were washed out of the adjoining great Pampean formation during its denudation, and afterwards redeposited.

We will now see what conclusions may be drawn from the facts above detailed. It is certain that the gravel-beds and intermediate red mud were deposited within the period, when existing species of Mollusca held to each other nearly the same relative proportions as they do on the present coast. These beds, from the number of littoral species, must have been accumulated in shallow water; but not, judging from the stratification of the gravel and the layers of marl, on a beach. From the manner in which the red clay fills up furrows in the underlying gravel, and is in some parts itself furrowed by the overlying gravel, whilst in other parts it either insensibly passes into, or alternates with, this upper gravel, we may infer several local changes in the currents, perhaps caused by slight changes, up or down, in the level of the land. By the elevation of these beds, to which period the alluvial mantle with pumice-pebbles, land and sea-shells belongs, the plain of Punta Alta, from twenty to thirty feet in height, was formed. In this neighbourhood there are other and higher sea-formed plains and lines of cliffs in the Pampean formation worn by the denuding action of the waves at different levels. Hence we can easily understand the presence of rounded masses of tosca-rock in this lowest plain; and likewise, as the cliffs at Monte Hermoso with their mammiferous remains stand at a higher level, the presence of the one much-rolled fragment of bone which was as black as jet: possibly some few of the other much-rolled bones may have been similarly derived, though I saw only the one fragment, in the same condition with those from Monte Hermoso. M. d’Orbigny has suggested that all these mammiferous remains may have been washed out of the Pampean formation, and afterwards redeposited together with the recent shells. (“Voyage” Part. Geolog. page 49.) Undoubtedly it is a marvellous fact that these numerous gigantic quadrupeds, belonging, with the exception of the Equus curvidens, to seven extinct genera, and one, namely, the Toxodon, not falling into any existing family, should have co-existed with Mollusca, all of which are still living species; but analogous facts have been observed in North America and in Europe. In the first place, it should not be overlooked, that most of the co-embedded shells have a more ancient and altered appearance than the bones. In the second place, is it probable that numerous bones not hardened by silex or any other mineral, could have retained their delicate prominences and surfaces perfect if they had been washed out of one deposit, and re-embedded in another:—this later deposit being formed of large, hard pebbles, arranged by the action of currents or breakers in shallow water into variously curved and inclined layers? The bones which are now in so perfect a state of preservation, must, I conceive, have been fresh and sound when embedded, and probably were protected by skin, flesh, or ligaments. The skeleton of the Scelidotherium indisputably was deposited entire: shall we say that when held together by its matrix it was washed out of an old gravel-bed (totally unlike in character to the Pampean formation), and re-embedded in another gravel-bed, composed (I speak after careful comparison) of exactly the same kind of pebbles, in the same kind of cement? I will lay no stress on the two cases of several ribs and bones of the extremities having APPARENTLY been embedded in their proper relative position: but will any one be so bold as to affirm that it is possible, that a piece of the thin tessellated armour of a Dasypoid quadruped, at least three feet long and two in width, and now so tender that I was unable with the utmost care to extract a fragment more than two or three inches square, could have been washed out of one bed, and re-embedded in another, together with some of the small bones of the feet, without having been dashed into atoms? We must then wholly reject M. d’Orbigny’s supposition, and admit as certain, that the Scelidotherium and the large Dasypoid quadruped, and as highly probable, that the Toxodon, Megatherium, etc., some of the bones of which are perfectly preserved, were embedded for the first time, and in a fresh condition, in the strata in which they were found entombed. These gigantic quadrupeds, therefore, though belonging to extinct genera and families, coexisted with the twenty above-enumerated Mollusca, the barnacle and two corals, still living on this coast. From the rolled fragment of black bone, and from the plain of Punta Alta being lower than that of Monte Hermoso, I conclude that the coarse sub-littoral deposits of Punta Alta, are of subsequent origin to the Pampean mud of Monte Hermoso; and the beds at this latter place, as we have seen, are probably of subsequent origin to the high tosca-plain round the Sierra Ventana: we shall, however, return, at the end of this chapter, to the consideration of these several stages in the great Pampean formation.

BUENOS AYRES TO ST. FE BAJADA, IN ENTRE RIOS.

For some distance northward of Buenos Ayres, the escarpment of the Pampean formation does not approach very near to the Plata, and it is concealed by vegetation: but in sections on the banks of the Rios Luxan, Areco, and Arrecifes, I observed both pale and dark reddish Pampean mud, with small, whitish concretions of tosca; at all these places mammiferous remains have been found. In the cliffs on the Parana, at San Nicolas, the Pampean mud contains but little tosca; here M. d’Orbigny found the remains of two rodents (Ctenomys Bonariensis and Kerodon antiquus) and the jaw of a Canis: when on the river I could clearly distinguish in this fine line of cliffs, “horizontal lines of variation both in tint and compactness.” (I quote these words from my note-book, as written down on the spot, on account of the general absence of stratification in the Pampean formation having been insisted on by M. d’Orbigny as a proof of the diluvial origin of this great deposit.) The plain northward of this point is very level, but with some depressions and lakes; I estimated its height at from forty to sixty feet above the Parana. At the A. Medio the bright red Pampean mud contains scarcely any tosca-rock; whilst at a short distance the stream of the Pabon, forms a cascade, about twenty feet in height, over a cavernous mass of two varieties of tosca-rock; of which one is very compact and semi- crystalline, with seams of crystallised carbonate of lime: similar compact varieties are met with on the Salidillo and Seco. The absolute identity (I speak after a comparison of my specimens) between some of these varieties, and those from Tapalguen, and from the ridge south of Bahia Blanca, a distance of 400 miles of latitude, is very striking.

At Rosario there is but little tosca-rock: near this place I first noticed at the edge of the river traces of an underlying formation, which, twenty- five miles higher up in the estancia of Gorodona, consists of a pale yellowish clay, abounding with concretionary cylinders of a ferruginous sandstone. This bed, which is probably the equivalent of the older tertiary marine strata, immediately to be described in Entre Rios, only just rises above the level of the Parana when low. The rest of the cliff at Gorodona, is formed of red Pampean mud, with, in the lower part, many concretions of tosca, some stalacti-formed, and with only a few in the upper part: at the height of six feet above the river, two gigantic skeletons of the Mastodon Andium were here embedded; their bones were scattered a few feet apart, but many of them still held their proper relative positions: they were much decayed and as soft as cheese, so that even one of the great molar teeth fell into pieces in my hand. We here see that the Pampean deposit contains mammiferous remains close to its base. On the banks of the Carcarana, a few miles distant, the lowest bed visible was pale Pampean mud, with masses of tosca-rock, in one of which I found a much decayed tooth of the Mastodon: above this bed, there was a thin layer almost composed of small concretions of white tosca, out of which I extracted a well preserved, but slightly broken tooth of Toxodon Platensis: above this there was an unusual bed of very soft impure sandstone. In this neighbourhood I noticed many single embedded bones, and I heard of others having been found in so perfect a state that they were long used as gate-posts: the Jesuit Falkner found here the dermal armour of some gigantic Edental quadruped.

In some of the red mud scraped from a tooth of one of the Mastodons at Gorodona, Professor Ehrenberg finds seven Polygastrica and thirteen Phytolitharia, all of them, I believe, with two exceptions, already known species. (“Monatsberichten der konig. Akad. zu Berlin” April 1845. The list consists of:—

POLYGASTRICA. Campylodiscus clypeus. Coscinodiscus subtilis. Coscinodiscus al. sp. Eunotia. Gallionella granulata. Himantidium gracile. Pinnularia borealis.)

Of these twenty, the preponderating number are of fresh-water origin; only two species of Coscinodiscus and a Spongolithis show the direct influence of the sea; therefore Professor Ehrenberg arrives at the important conclusion that the deposit must have been of brackish-water origin. Of the thirteen Phytolitharia, nine are met with in the two deposits in Bahia Blanca, where there is evidence from two other species of Polygastrica that the beds were accumulated in brackish water. The traces of coral, sponges, and Polythalamia, found by Dr. Carpenter in the tosca-rock (of which I must observe the greater number of specimens were from the upper beds in the southern parts of the formation), apparently show a more purely marine origin.

At ST. FE BAJADA, in Entre Rios, the cliffs, estimated at between sixty and seventy feet in height, expose an interesting section: the lower half consists of tertiary strata with marine shells, and the upper half of the Pampean formation. The lowest bed is an obliquely laminated, blackish, indurated mud, with distinct traces of vegetable remains. (M. d’Orbigny “Voyage” Part. Geolog. page 37, has given a detailed description of this section, but as he does not mention this lowest bed, it may have been concealed when he was there by the river. There is a considerable discrepancy between his description and mine, which I can only account for by the beds themselves varying considerably in short distances.) Above this there is a thick bed of yellowish sandy clay, with much crystallised gypsum and many shells of Ostreae, Pectens, and Arcae: above this there generally comes an arenaceous crystalline limestone, but there is sometimes interposed a bed, about twelve feet thick, of dark green, soapy clay, weathering into small angular fragments. The limestone, where purest, is white, highly crystalline, and full of cavities: it includes small pebbles of quartz, broken shells, teeth of sharks, and sometimes, as I was informed, large bones: it often contains so much sand as to pass into a calcareous sandstone, and in such parts the great Ostrea Patagonica chiefly abounds. (Captain Sulivan, R.N., has given me a specimen of this shell, which he found in the cliffs at Point Cerrito, between twenty and thirty miles above the Bajada.) In the upper part, the limestone alternates with layers of fine white sand. The shells included in these beds have been named for me by M. d’Orbigny: they consist of:—

1. Ostrea Patagonica, d’Orbigny, “Voyage” Part. Pal. 2. Ostrea Alvarezii, d’Orbigny, “Voyage” Part. Pal. 3. Pecten Paranensis, d’Orbigny, “Voyage” Part. Pal. 4. Pecten Darwinianus, d’Orbigny, “Voyage” Part. Pal. 5. Venus Munsterii, d’Orbigny, “Voyage” Pal. 6. Arca Bonplandiana, d’Orbigny, “Voyage” Pal. 7. Cardium Platense, d’Orbigny, “Voyage” Pal. 8. Tellina, probably nov. species, but too imperfect for description.

PHYTOLITHARIA.

Lithasteriscus tuberculatus. Lithodontium bursa. Lithodontium furcatum. Lithodontium rostratum. Lithostylidium Amphiodon. Lithostylidium Clepsammidium. Lithostylidium Hamus. Lithostylidium polyedrum. Lithostylidium quadratum. Lithostylidium rude. Lithostylidium Serra. Lithostylidium unidentatum. Spongolithis Fustis.

These species are all extinct: the six first were found by M. d’Orbigny and myself in the formations of the Rio Negro, S. Josef, and other parts of Patagonia; and therefore, as first observed by M. d’Orbigny, these beds certainly belong to the great Patagonian formation, which will be described in the ensuing chapter, and which we shall see must be considered as a very ancient tertiary one. North of the Bajada, M. d’Orbigny found, in beds which he considers as lying beneath the strata here described, remains of a Toxodon, which he has named as a distinct species from the T. Platensis of the Pampean formation. Much silicified wood is found on the banks of the Parana (and likewise on the Uruguay), and I was informed that they come out of these lower beds; four specimens collected by myself are dicotyledonous.

The upper half of the cliff, to a thickness of about thirty feet, consists of Pampean mud, of which the lower part is pale-coloured, and the upper part of a brighter red, with some irregular layers of an arenaceous variety of tosca, and a few small concretions of the ordinary kind. Close above the marine limestone, there is a thin stratum with a concretionary outline of white hard tosca-rock or marl, which may be considered either as the uppermost bed of the inferior deposits, or the lowest of the Pampean formation; at one time I considered this bed as marking a passage between the two formations: but I have since become convinced that I was deceived on this point. In the section on the Parana, I did not find any mammiferous remains; but at two miles distance on the A. Tapas (a tributary of the Conchitas), they were extremely numerous in a low cliff of red Pampean mud with small concretions, precisely like the upper bed on the Parana. Most of the bones were solitary and much decayed; but I saw the dermal armour of a gigantic Edental quadruped, forming a caldron-like hollow, four or five feet in diameter, out of which, as I was informed, the almost entire skeleton had been lately removed. I found single teeth of the Mastodon Andium, Toxodon Platensis, and Equus curvidens, near to each other. As this latter tooth approaches closely to that of the common horse, I paid particular attention to its true embedment, for I did not at that time know that there was a similar tooth hidden in the matrix with the other mammiferous remains from Punta Alta. It is an interesting circumstance, that Professor Owen finds that the teeth of this horse approach more closely in their peculiar curvature to a fossil specimen brought by Mr. Lyell from North America, than to those of any other species of Equus. (Lyell “Travels in North America” volume 1 page 164 and “Proceedings of Geological Society” volume 4 page 39.)

The underlying marine tertiary strata extend over a wide area: I was assured that they can be traced in ravines in an east and west line across Entre Rios to the Uruguay, a distance of about 135 miles. In a S.E. direction I heard of their existence at the head of the R. Nankay; and at P. Gorda in Banda Oriental, a distance of 170 miles, I found the same limestone, containing the same fossil shells, lying at about the same level above the river as at St. Fe. In a southerly direction, these beds sink in height, for at another P. Gorda in Entre Rios, the limestone is seen at a much less height; and there can be little doubt that the yellowish sandy clay, on a level with the river, between the Carcarana and S. Nicholas, belongs to this same formation; as perhaps do the beds of sand at Buenos Ayres, which lie at the bottom of the Pampean formation, about sixty feet beneath the surface of the Plata. The southerly declination of these beds may perhaps be due, not to unequal elevation, but to the original form of the bottom of the sea, sloping from land situated to the north; for that land existed at no great distance, we have evidence in the vegetable remains in the lowest bed at St. Fe; and in the silicified wood and in the bones of Toxodon Paranensis, found (according to M. d’Orbigny) in still lower strata.

BANDA ORIENTAL.

This province lies on the northern side of the Plata, and eastward of the Uruguay: it has a gentle undulatory surface, with a basis of primary rocks; and is in most parts covered up with an unstratified mass, of no great thickness, of reddish Pampean mud. In the eastern half, near Maldonado, this deposit is more arenaceous than in the Pampas, it contains many though small concretions of marl or tosca-rock, and others of highly ferruginous sandstone; in one section, only a few yards in depth, it rested on stratified sand. Near Monte Video this deposit in some spots appears to be of greater thickness; and the remains of the Glyptodon and other extinct mammifers have been found in it. In the long line of cliffs, between fifty and sixty feet in height, called the Barrancas de S. Gregorio, which extend westward of the Rio S. Lucia, the lower half is formed of coarse sand of quartz and feldspar without mica, like that now cast up on the beach near Maldonado; and the upper half of Pampean mud, varying in colour and containing honeycombed veins of soft calcareous matter and small concretions of tosca-rock arranged in lines, and likewise a few pebbles of quartz. This deposit fills up hollows and furrows in the underlying sand; appearing as if water charged with mud had invaded a sandy beach. These cliffs extend far westward, and at a distance of sixty miles, near Colonia del Sacramiento, I found the Pampean deposit resting in some places on this sand, and in others on the primary rocks: between the sand and the reddish mud, there appeared to be interposed, but the section was not a very good one, a thin bed of shells of an existing Mytilus, still partially retaining their colour. The Pampean formation in Banda Oriental might readily be mistaken for an alluvial deposit: compared with that of the Pampas, it is often more sandy, and contains small fragments of quartz; the concretions are much smaller, and there are no extensive masses of tosca-rock.

In the extreme western parts of this province, between the Uruguay and a line drawn from Colonia to the R. Perdido (a tributary of the R. Negro), the formations are far more complicated. Besides primary rocks, we meet with extensive tracts and many flat-topped, horizontally stratified, cliff- bounded, isolated hills of tertiary strata, varying extraordinarily in mineralogical nature, some identical with the old marine beds of St. Fe Bajada, and some with those of the much more recent Pampean formation. There are, also, extensive LOW tracts of country covered with a deposit containing mammiferous remains, precisely like that just described in the more eastern parts of the province. Although from the smooth and unbroken state of the country, I never obtained a section of this latter deposit close to the foot of the higher tertiary hills, yet I have not the least doubt that it is of quite subsequent origin; having been deposited after the sea had worn the tertiary strata into the cliff-bounded hills. This later formation, which is certainly the equivalent of that of the Pampas, is well seen in the valleys in the estancia of Berquelo, near Mercedes; it here consists of reddish earth, full of rounded grains of quartz, and with some small concretions of tosca-rock arranged in horizontal lines, so as perfectly to resemble, except in containing a little calcareous matter, the formation in the eastern parts of Banda Oriental, in Entre Rios, and at other places: in this estancia the skeleton of a great Edental quadruped was found. In the valley of the Sarandis, at the distance of only a few miles, this deposit has a somewhat different character, being whiter, softer, finer-grained, and full of little cavities, and consequently of little specific gravity; nor does it contain any concretions or calcareous matter: I here procured a head, which when first discovered must have been quite perfect, of the Toxodon Platensis, another of a Mylodon (This head was at first considered by Professor Owen (in the “Zoology of the ‘Beagle’s’ Voyage”) as belonging to a distinct genus, namely, Glossotherium.), perhaps M. Darwinii, and a large piece of dermal armour, differing from that of the Glyptodon clavipes. These bones are remarkable from their extraordinarily fresh appearance; when held over a lamp of spirits of wine, they give out a strong odour and burn with a small flame; Mr. T. Reeks has been so kind as to analyse some of the fragments, and he finds that they contain about 7 per cent of animal matter, and 8 per cent of water. (Liebig “Chemistry of Agriculture” page 194 states that fresh dry bones contain from 32 to 33 per cent of dry gelatine. See also Dr. Daubeny, in “Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal” volume 37 page 293.)

The older tertiary strata, forming the higher isolated hills and extensive tracts of country, vary, as I have said, extraordinarily in composition: within the distance of a few miles, I sometimes passed over crystalline limestone with agate, calcareous tuffs, and marly rocks, all passing into each other,—red and pale mud with concretions of tosca-rock, quite like the Pampean formation,—calcareous conglomerates and sandstones,—bright red sandstones passing either into red conglomerate, or into white sandstone,—hard siliceous sandstones, jaspery and chalcedonic rocks, and numerous other subordinate varieties. I was unable to mark out the relations of all these strata, and will describe only a few distinct sections:—in the cliffs between P. Gorda on the Uruguay and the A. de Vivoras, the upper bed is crystalline cellular limestone often passing into calcareous sandstone, with impressions of some of the same shells as at St. Fe Bajada; at P. Gorda, this limestone is interstratified with and rests on, white sand, which covers a bed about thirty feet thick of pale-coloured clay, with many shells of the great Ostrea Patagonica (In my “Journal” page 171 1st edition, I have hastily and inaccurately stated that the Pampean mud, which is found over the eastern part of B. Oriental, lies OVER the limestone at P. Gorda; I should have said that there was reason to infer that it was a subsequent or superior deposit.): beneath this, in the vertical cliff, nearly on a level with the river, there is a bed of red mud absolutely like the Pampean deposit, with numerous often large concretions of perfectly characterised white, compact tosca-rock. At the mouth of the Vivoras, the river flows over a pale cavernous tosca-rock, quite like that in the Pampas, and this APPEARED to underlie the crystalline limestone; but the section was not unequivocal like that at P. Gorda. These beds now form only a narrow and much denuded strip of land; but they must once have extended much further; for on the next stream, south of the S. Juan, Captain Sulivan, R.N., found a little cliff, only just above the surface of the river, with numerous shells of the Venus Munsterii, D’Orbigny,—one of the species occurring at St. Fe, and of which there are casts at P. Gorda: the line of cliffs of the subsequently deposited true Pampean mud, extend from Colonia to within half a mile of this spot, and no doubt once covered up this denuded marine stratum. Again at Colonia, a Frenchman found, in digging the foundations of a house, a great mass of the Ostrea Patagonica (of which I saw many fragments), packed together just beneath the surface, and directly superimposed on the gneiss. These sections are important: M. d’Orbigny is unwilling to believe that beds of the same nature with the Pampean formation ever underlie the ancient marine tertiary strata; and I was as much surprised at it as he could have been; but the vertical cliff at P. Gorda allowed of no mistake, and I must be permitted to affirm, that after having examined the country from the Colorado to St. Fe Bajada, I could not be deceived in the mineralogical character of the Pampean deposit.

Moreover, in a precipitous part of the ravine of Las Bocas, a red sandstone is distinctly seen to overlie a thick bed of pale mud, also quite like the Pampean formation, abounding with concretions of true tosca-rock. This sandstone extends over many miles of country: it is as red as the brightest volcanic scoriae; it sometimes passes into a coarse red conglomerate composed of the underlying primary rocks; and often passes into a soft white sandstone with red streaks. At the Calera de los Huerfanos, only a quarter of a mile south of where I first met with the red sandstone, the crystalline white limestone is quarried: as this bed is the uppermost, and as it often passes into calcareous sandstone, interstratified with pure sand; and as the red sandstone likewise passes into soft white sandstone, and is also the uppermost bed, I believe that these two beds, though so different, are equivalents. A few leagues southward of these two places, on each side of the low primary range of S. Juan, there are some flat-topped, cliff-bounded, separate little hills, very similar to those fringing the primary ranges in the great plain south of Buenos Ayres: they are composed—1st, of calcareous tuff with many particles of quartz, sometimes passing into a coarse conglomerate; 2nd, of a stone undistinguishable on the closest inspection from the compacter varieties of tosca-rock; and 3rd, of semi-crystalline limestone, including nodules of agate: these three varieties pass insensibly into each other, and as they form the uppermost stratum in this district, I believe that they, also, are the equivalents of the pure crystalline limestone, and of the red and white sandstones and conglomerates.

Between these points and Mercedes on the Rio Negro, there are scarcely any good sections, the road passing over limestone, tosca-rock, calcareous and bright red sandstones, and near the source of the San Salvador over a wide extent of jaspery rocks, with much milky agate, like that in the limestone near San Juan. In the estancia of Berquelo, the separate, flat-topped, cliff-bounded hills are rather higher than in the other parts of the country; they range in a N.E. and S.W. direction; their uppermost beds consist of the same bright red sandstone, passing sometimes into a conglomerate, and in the lower part into soft white sandstone, and even into loose sand: beneath this sandstone, I saw in two places layers of calcareous and marly rocks, and in one place red Pampean-like earth; at the base of these sections, there was a hard, stratified, white sandstone, with chalcedonic layers. Near Mercedes, beds of the same nature and apparently of the same age, are associated with compact, white, crystalline limestone, including much botryoidal agate, and singular masses, like porcelain, but really composed of a calcareo-siliceous paste. In sinking wells in this district the chalcedonic strata seem to be the lowest. Beds, such as there described, occur over the whole of this neighbourhood; but twenty miles further up the R. Negro, in the cliffs of Perika, which are about fifty feet in height, the upper bed is a prettily variegated chalcedony, mingled with a pure white tallowy limestone; beneath this there is a conglomerate of quartz and granite; beneath this many sandstones, some highly calcareous; and the whole lower two-thirds of the cliff consists of earthy calcareous beds of various degrees of purity, with one layer of reddish Pampean-like mud.

When examining the agates, the chalcedonic and jaspery rocks, some of the limestones, and even the bright red sandstones, I was forcibly struck with their resemblance to deposits formed in the neighbourhood of volcanic action. I now find that M. Isabelle, in his “Voyage a Buenos Ayres,” has described closely similar beds on Itaquy and Ibicuy (which enter the Uruguay some way north of the R. Negro) and these beds include fragments of red decomposed true scoriae hardened by zeolite, and of black retinite: we have then here good evidence of volcanic action during our tertiary period. Still further north, near S. Anna, where the Parana makes a remarkable bend, M. Bonpland found some singular amygdaloidal rocks, which perhaps may belong to this same epoch. (M. d’Orbigny “Voyage” Part. Geolog. page 29) I may remark that, judging from the size and well-rounded condition of the blocks of rock in the above-described conglomerates, masses of primary formation probably existed at this tertiary period above water: there is, also, according to M. Isabelle, much conglomerate further north, at Salto.

From whatever source and through whatever means the great Pampean formation originated, we here have, I must repeat, unequivocal evidence of a similar action at a period before that of the deposition of the marine tertiary strata with extinct shells, at Santa Fe and P. Gorda. During also the deposition of these strata, we have in the intercalated layers of red Pampean-like mud and tosca-rock, and in the passage near S. Juan of the semi-crystalline limestones with agate into tosca undistinguishable from that of the Pampas, evidence of the same action, though continued only at intervals and in a feeble manner. We have further seen that in this district, at a period not only subsequent to the deposition of the tertiary strata, but to their upheavement and most extensive denudation, true Pampean mud with its usual characters and including mammiferous remains, was deposited round and between the hills or islets formed of these tertiary strata, and over the whole eastern and low primary districts of Banda Oriental.

EARTHY MASS, WITH EXTINCT MAMMIFEROUS REMAINS, OVER THE PORPHYRITIC GRAVEL AT S. JULIAN, LATITUDE 49 DEGREES 14′ S., IN PATAGONIA.

(FIGURE 16. SECTION OF THE LOWEST PLAIN AT PORT S. JULIAN.

(Section through beds from top to bottom: A, B, C, D, E, F.)

AA. Superficial bed of reddish earth, with the remains of the Macrauchenia, and with recent sea-shells on the surface.

B. Gravel of porphyritic rocks.

C. and D. Pumiceous mudstone.—Ancient tertiary formation.

E. and F. Sandstone and argillaceous beds.—Ancient tertiary formation.)

This case, though not coming strictly under the Pampean formation, may be conveniently given here. On the south side of the harbour, there is a nearly level plain (mentioned in the First Chapter) about seven miles long, and three or four miles wide, estimated at ninety feet in height, and bordered by perpendicular cliffs, of which a section is represented in Figure 16.

The lower old tertiary strata (to be described in the next chapter) are covered by the usual gravel bed; and this by an irregular earthy, sometimes sandy mass, seldom more than two or three feet in thickness, except where it fills up furrows or gullies worn not only through the underlying gravel, but even through the upper tertiary beds. This earthy mass is of a pale reddish colour, like the less pure varieties of Pampean mud in Banda Oriental; it includes small calcareous concretions, like those of tosca- rock but more arenaceous, and other concretions of a greenish, indurated argillaceous substance: a few pebbles, also, from the underlying gravel-bed are also included in it, and these being occasionally arranged in horizontal lines, show that the mass is of sub-aqueous origin. On the surface and embedded in the superficial parts, there are numerous shells, partially retaining their colours, of three or four of the now commonest littoral species. Near the bottom of one deep furrow (represented in Figure 16), filled up with this earthy deposit, I found a large part of the skeleton of the Macrauchenia Patachonica—a gigantic and most extraordinary pachyderm, allied, according to Professor Owen, to the Palaeotherium, but with affinities to the Ruminants, especially to the American division of the Camelidae. Several of the vertebrae in a chain, and nearly all the bones of one of the limbs, even to the smallest bones of the foot, were embedded in their proper relative positions: hence the skeleton was certainly united by its flesh or ligaments, when enveloped in the mud. This earthy mass, with its concretions and mammiferous remains, filling up furrows in the underlying gravel, certainly presents a very striking resemblance to some of the sections (for instance, at P. Alta in B. Blanca, or at the Barrancas de S. Gregorio) in the Pampean formation; but I must believe that this resemblance is only accidental. I suspect that the mud which at the present day is accumulating in deep and narrow gullies at the head of the harbour, would, after elevation, present a very similar appearance. The southernmost part of the true Pampean formation, namely, on the Colorado, lies 560 miles of latitude north of this point. (In the succeeding chapter I shall have to refer to a great deposit of extinct mammiferous remains, lately discovered by Captain Sulivan, R.N., at a point still further south, namely, at the R. Gallegos; their age must at present remain doubtful.)

With respect to the age of the Macrauchenia, the shells on the surface prove that the mass in which the skeleton was enveloped has been elevated above the sea within the recent period: I did not see any of the shells embedded at a sufficient depth to assure me (though it be highly probable) that the whole thickness of the mass was contemporaneous with these INDIVIDUAL SPECIMENS. That the Macrauchenia lived subsequently to the spreading out of the gravel on this plain is certain; and that this gravel, at the height of ninety feet, was spread out long after the existence of recent shells, is scarcely less certain. For, it was shown in the First Chapter, that this line of coast has been upheaved with remarkable equability, and that over a vast space both north and south of S. Julian, recent species of shells are strewed on (or embedded in) the surface of the 250 feet plain, and of the 350 feet plain up to a height of 400 feet. These wide step-formed plains have been formed by the denuding action of the coast-waves on the old tertiary strata; and therefore, when the surface of the 350 feet plain, with the shells on it, first rose above the level of the sea, the 250 feet plain did not exist, and its formation, as well as the spreading out of the gravel on its summit, must have taken place subsequently. So also the denudation and the gravel-covering of the 90 feet plain must have taken place subsequently to the elevation of the 250 feet plain, on which recent shells are also strewed. Hence there cannot be any doubt that the Macrauchenia, which certainly was entombed in a fresh state, and which must have been alive after the spreading out of the gravel on the 90 feet plain, existed, not only subsequently to the upraised shells on the surface of the 250 feet plain, but also to those on the 350 to 400 feet plain: these shells, eight in number (namely, three species of Mytilus, two of Patella, one Fusus, Voluta, and Balanus), are undoubtedly recent species, and are the commonest kinds now living on this coast. At Punta Alta in B. Blanca, I remarked how marvellous it was, that the Toxodon, a mammifer so unlike to all known genera, should have co-existed with twenty- three still living marine animals; and now we find that the Macrauchenia, a quadruped only a little less anomalous than the Toxodon, also co-existed with eight other still existing Mollusca: it should, moreover, be borne in mind, that a tooth of a pachydermatous animal was found with the other remains at Punta Alta, which Professor Owen thinks almost certainly belonged to the Macrauchenia.

Mr. Lyell has arrived at a highly important conclusion with respect to the age of the North American extinct mammifers (many of which are closely allied to, and even identical with, those of the Pampean formation), namely, that they lived subsequently to the period when erratic boulders were transported by the agency of floating ice in temperate latitudes. (“Geological Proceedings” volume 4 page 36.) Now in the valley of the Santa Cruz, only fifty miles of latitude south of the spot where the Macrauchenia was entombed, vast numbers of gigantic, angular boulders, which must have been transported from the Cordillera on icebergs, lie strewed on the plain, at the height of 1,400 feet above the level of the sea. In ascending to this level, several step-formed plains must be crossed, all of which have necessarily required long time for their formation; hence the lowest or ninety feet plain, with its superficial bed containing the remains of the Macrauchenia, must have been formed very long subsequently to the period when the 1,400 feet plain was beneath the sea, and boulders were dropped on it from floating masses of ice. (It must not be inferred from these remarks, that the ice-action ceased in South America at this comparatively ancient period; for in Tierra del Fuego boulders were probably transported contemporaneously with, if not subsequently to, the formation of the ninety feet plain at S. Julian, and at other parts of the coast of Patagonia.) Mr. Lyell’s conclusion, therefore, is thus far confirmed in the southern hemisphere; and it is the more important, as one is naturally tempted to admit so simple an explanation, that it was the ice-period that caused the extinction of the numerous great mammifers which so lately swarmed over the two Americas.

A SUMMARY AND CONCLUDING REMARKS ON THE PAMPEAN FORMATION.

One of its most striking features is its great extent; I passed continuously over it from the Colorado to St. Fe Bajada, a distance of 500 geographical miles; and M. d’Orbigny traced it for 250 miles further north. In the latitude of the Plata, I examined this formation at intervals over an east and west line of 300 miles from Maldonado to the R. Carcarana; and M. d’Orbigny believes it extends 100 miles further inland: from Mr. Caldcleugh’s travels, however, I should have thought that it had extended, south of the Cordovese range, to near Mendoza, and I may add that I heard of great bones having been found high up the R. Quinto. Hence the area of the Pampean formation, as remarked by M. d’Orbigny, is probably at least equal to that of France, and perhaps twice or thrice as great. In a basin, surrounded by gravel-cliff (at a height of nearly three thousand feet), south of Mendoza, there is, as described in the Third Chapter, a deposit very like the Pampean, interstratified with other matter; and again at S. Julian’s, in Patagonia, 560 miles south of the Colorado, a small irregular bed of a nearly similar nature contains, as we have just seen, mammiferous remains. In the provinces of Moxos and Chiquitos (1,000 miles northward of the Pampas), and in Bolivia, at a height of 4,000 metres, M. d’Orbigny has described similar deposits, which he believes to have been formed by the same agency contemporaneously with the Pampean formation. Considering the immense distances between these several points, and their different heights, it appears to me infinitely more probable, that this similarity has resulted not from contemporaneousness of origin, but from the similarity of the rocky framework of the continent: it is known that in Brazil an immense area consists of gneissic rocks, and we shall hereafter see, over how great a length the plutonic rocks of the Cordillera, the overlying purple porphyries, and the trachytic ejections, are almost identical in nature.

Three theories on the origin of the Pampean formation have been propounded:—First, that of a great debacle by M. d’Orbigny; this seems founded chiefly on the absence of stratification, and on the number of embedded remains of terrestrial quadrupeds. Although the Pampean formation (like so many argillaceous deposits) is not divided into distinct and separate strata, yet we have seen that in one good section it was striped with horizontal zones of colour, and that in several specified places the upper and lower parts differed, not only considerably in colour, but greatly in constitution. In the southern part of the Pampas the upper mass (to a certain extent stratified) generally consists of hard tosca-rock, and the lower part of red Pampean mud, often itself divided into two or more masses, varying in colour and in the quantity of included calcareous matter. In Western Banda Oriental, beds of a similar nature, but of a greater age, conformably underlie and are intercalated with the regularly stratified tertiary formation. As a general rule, the marly concretions are arranged in horizontal lines, sometimes united into irregular strata: surely, if the mud had been tumultuously deposited in mass, the included calcareous matter would have segregated itself irregularly, and not into nodules arranged in horizontal lines, one above the other and often far apart: this arrangement appears to me to prove that mud, differing slightly in composition, was successively and quietly deposited. On the theory of a debacle, a prodigious amount of mud, without a single pebble, is supposed to have been borne over the wide surface of the Pampas, when under water: on the other hand, over the whole of Patagonia, the same or another debacle is supposed to have borne nothing but gravel,—the gravel and the fine mud in the neighbourhood of the Rios Negro and Colorado having been borne to an equal distance from the Cordillera, or imagined line of disturbance: assuredly directly opposite effects ought not to be attributed to the same agency. Where, again, could a mass of fine sediment, charged with calcareous matter in a fit state for chemical segregation, and in quantity sufficient to cover an area at least 750 miles long, and 400 miles broad, to a depth of from twenty to thirty feet to a hundred feet, have been accumulated, ready to be transported by the supposed debacle? To my mind it is little short of demonstration, that a great lapse of time was necessary for the production and deposition of the enormous amount of mudlike matter forming the Pampas; nor should I have noticed the theory of a debacle, had it not been adduced by a naturalist so eminent as M. d’Orbigny.

A second theory, first suggested, I believe, by Sir W. Parish, is that the Pampean formation was thrown down on low and marshy plains by the rivers of this country before they assumed their present courses. The appearance and composition of the deposit, the manner in which it slopes up and round the primary ranges, the nature of the underlying marine beds, the estuary and sea-shells on the surface, the overlying sandstone beds at M. Hermoso, are all quite opposed to this view. Nor do I believe that there is a single instance of a skeleton of one of the extinct mammifers having been found in an upright position, as if it had been mired.

The third theory, of the truth of which I cannot entertain the smallest doubt, is that the Pampean formation was slowly accumulated at the mouth of the former estuary of the Plata and in the sea adjoining it. I have come to this conclusion from the reasons assigned against the two foregoing theories, and from simple geographical considerations. From the numerous shells of the Azara labiata lying loose on the surface of the plains, and near Buenos Ayres embedded in the tosca-rock, we know that this formation not only was formerly covered by, but that the uppermost parts were deposited in, the brackish water of the ancient La Plata. Southward and seaward of Buenos Ayres, the plains were upheaved from under water inhabited by true marine shells. We further know from Professor Ehrenberg’s examination of the twenty microscopical organisms in the mud round the tooth of the Mastodon high up the course of the Parana, that the bottom- most part of this formation was of brackish-water origin. A similar conclusion must be extended to the beds of like composition, at the level of the sea and under it, at M. Hermoso in Bahia Blanca. Dr. Carpenter finds that the harder varieties of tosca-rock, collected chiefly to the south, contain marine spongoid bodies, minute fragments of shells, corals, and Polythalamia; these perhaps may have been drifted inwards by the tides, from the more open parts of the sea. The absence of shells, throughout this deposit, with the exception of the uppermost layers near Buenos Ayres, is a remarkable fact: can it be explained by the brackish condition of the water, or by the deep mud at the bottom? I have stated that both the reddish mud and the concretions of tosca-rock are often penetrated by minute, linear cavities, such as frequently may be observed in fresh-water calcareous deposits:—were they produced by the burrowing of small worms? Only on this view of the Pampean formation having been of estuary origin, can the extraordinary numbers (presently to be alluded to) of the embedded mammiferous remains be explained. (It is almost superfluous to give the numerous cases (for instance, in Sumatra; Lyell “Principles” volume 3 page 325 sixth edition, of the carcasses of animals having been washed out to sea by swollen rivers; but I may refer to a recent account by Mr. Bettington “Asiatic Society” 1845 June 21st, of oxen, deer, and bears being carried into the Gulf of Cambray; see also the account in my “Journal” 2nd edition page 133, of the numbers of animals drowned in the Plata during the great, often recurrent, droughts.)

With respect to the first origin of the reddish mud, I will only remark, that the enormous area of Brazil consists in chief part of gneissic and other granitic rocks, which have suffered decomposition, and been converted into a red, gritty, argillaceous mass, to a greater depth than in any other country which I have seen. The mixture of rounded grains, and even of small fragments and pebbles of quartz, in the Pampean mud of Banda Oriental, is evidently due to the neighbouring and underlying primary rocks. The estuary mud was drifted during the Pampean period in a much more southerly course, owing probably to the east and west primary ridges south of the Plata not having been then elevated, than the mud of the Plata at present is; for it was formerly deposited as far south as the Colorado. The quantity of calcareous matter in this formation, especially in those large districts where the whole mass passes into tosca-rock, is very great: I have already remarked on the close resemblance in external and microscopical appearance, between this tosca-rock and the strata at Coquimbo, which have certainly resulted from the decay and attrition of recent shells: I dare not, however, extend this conclusion to the calcareous rocks of the Pampas, more especially as the underlying tertiary strata in western Banda Oriental show that at that period there was a copious emission of carbonate of lime, in connection with volcanic action. (I may add, that there are nearly similar superficial calcareous beds at King George’s Sound in Australia; and these undoubtedly have been formed by the disintegration of marine remains see “Volcanic Islands” etc. page 144. There is, however, something very remarkable in the frequency of superficial, thin beds of earthy calcareous matter, in districts where the surrounding rocks are not calcareous. Major Charters, in a Paper read before the Geographical Society April 13, 1840 and abstracted in the “Athenaeum” page 317, states that this is the case in parts of Mexico, and that he has observed similar appearances in many parts of South Africa. The circumstance of the uppermost stratum round the ragged Sierra Ventana, consisting of calcareous or marly matter, without any covering of alluvial matter, strikes me as very singular, in whatever manner we view the deposition and elevation of the Pampean formation.)

The Pampean formation, judging from its similar composition, and from the apparent absolute specific identity of some of its mammiferous remains, and from the generic resemblance of others, belongs over its vast area— throughout Banda Oriental, Entre Rios, and the wide extent of the Pampas as far south as the Colorado,—to the same geological epoch. The mammiferous remains occur at all depths from the top to the bottom of the deposit; and I may add that nowhere in the Pampas is there any appearance of much superficial denudation: some bones which I found near the Guardia del Monte were embedded close to the surface; and this appears to have been the case with many of those discovered in Banda Oriental: on the Matanzas, twenty miles south of Buenos Ayres, a Glyptodon was embedded five feet beneath the surface; numerous remains were found by S. Muniz, near Luxan, at an average depth of eighteen feet; in Buenos Ayres a skeleton was disinterred at sixty feet depth, and on the Parana I have described two skeletons of the Mastodon only five or six feet above the very base of the deposit. With respect to the age of this formation, as judged of by the ordinary standard of the existence of Mollusca, the only evidence within the limits of the true Pampas which is at all trustworthy, is afforded by the still living Azara labiata being embedded in tosca-rock near Buenos Ayres. At Punta Alta, however, we have seen that several of the extinct mammifers, most characteristic of the Pampean formation, co-existed with twenty species of Mollusca, a barnacle and two corals, all still living on this same coast;— for when we remember that the shells have a more ancient appearance than the bones; that many of the bones, though embedded in a coarse conglomerate, are perfectly preserved; that almost all the parts of the skeleton of the Scelidotherium, even to the knee-cap, were lying in their proper relative positions; and that a large piece of the fragile dermal armour of a Dasypoid quadruped, connected with some of the bones of the foot, had been entombed in a condition allowing the two sides to be doubled together, it must assuredly be admitted that these mammiferous remains were embedded in a fresh state, and therefore that the living animals co-existed with the co-embedded shells. Moreover, the Macrauchenia Patachonica (of which, according to Professor Owen, remains also occur in the Pampas of Buenos Ayres, and at Punta Alta) has been shown by satisfactory evidence of another kind, to have lived on the plains of Patagonia long after the period when the adjoining sea was first tenanted by its present commonest molluscous animals. We must, therefore, conclude that the Pampean formation belongs, in the ordinary geological sense of the word, to the Recent Period. (M. d’Orbigny believes “Voyage” Part. Geolog. page 81, that this formation, though “tres voisine de la notre, est neanmoins de beaucoup anterieure a notre creation.”)

At St. Fe Bajada, the Pampean estuary formation, with its mammiferous remains, conformably overlies the marine tertiary strata, which (as first shown by M. d’Orbigny) are contemporaneous with those of Patagonia, and which, as we shall hereafter see, belong to a very ancient tertiary stage. When examining the junction between these two formations, I thought that the concretionary layer of marl marked a passage between the marine and estuary stages. M. d’Orbigny disputes this view (as given in my “Journal”), and I admit that it is erroneous, though in some degree excusable, from their conformability and from both abounding with calcareous matter. It would, indeed, have been a great anomaly if there had been a true passage between a deposit contemporaneous with existing species of mollusca, and one in which all the mollusca appear to be extinct. Northward of Santa Fe, M. d’Orbigny met with ferruginous sandstones, marly rocks, and other beds, which he considers as a distinct and lower formation; but the evidence that they are not parts of the same with an altered mineralogical character, does not appear to me quite satisfactory.

In Western Banda Oriental, while the marine tertiary strata were accumulating, there were volcanic eruptions, much silex and lime were precipitated from solution, coarse conglomerates were formed, being derived probably from adjoining land, and layers of red mud and marly rocks, like those of the Pampean formation, were occasionally deposited. The true Pampean deposit, with mammiferous remains, instead of as at Santa Fe overlying conformably the tertiary strata, is here seen at a lower level folding round and between the flat-topped, cliff-bounded hills, formed by a upheaval and denudation of these same tertiary strata. The upheaval, having occurred here earlier than at Santa Fe, may be naturally accounted for by the contemporaneous volcanic action. At the Barrancas de S. Gregorio, the Pampean deposit, as we have seen, overlies and fills up furrows in coarse sand, precisely like that now accumulating on the shores near the mouth of the Plata. I can hardly believe that this loose and coarse sand is contemporaneous with the old tertiary and often crystalline strata of the more western parts of the province; and am induced to suspect that it is of subsequent origin. If that section near Colonia could be implicitly trusted, in which, at a height of only fifteen feet above the Plata, a bed of fresh-looking mussels, of an existing littoral species, appeared to lie between the sand and the Pampean mud, I should conclude that Banda Oriental must have stood, when the coarse sand was accumulating, at only a little below its present level, and had then subsided, allowing the estuary Pampean mud to cover far and wide its surface up to a height of some hundred feet; and that after this subsidence the province had been uplifted to its present level.

In Western Banda Oriental, we know, from two unequivocal sections that there is a mass, absolutely undistinguishable from the true Pampean deposit, beneath the old tertiary strata. This inferior mass must be very much more ancient than the upper deposit with its mammiferous remains, for it lies beneath the tertiary strata in which all the shells are extinct. Nevertheless, the lower and upper masses, as well as some intermediate layers, are so similar in mineralogical character, that I cannot doubt that they are all of estuary origin, and have been derived from the same great source. At first it appeared to me extremely improbable, that mud of the same nature should have been deposited on nearly the same spot, during an immense lapse of time, namely, from a period equivalent perhaps to the Eocene of Europe to that of the Pampean formation. But as, at the very commencement of the Pampean period, if not at a still earlier period, the Sierra Ventana formed a boundary to the south,—the Cordillera or the plains in front of them to the west,—the whole province of Corrientes probably to the north, for, according to M. d’Orbigny, it is not covered by the Pampean deposit,—and Brazil, as known by the remains in the caves, to the north-east; and as again, during the older tertiary period, land already existed in Western Banda Oriental and near St. Fe Bajada, as may be inferred from the vegetable debris, from the quantities of silicified wood, and from the remains of a Toxodon found, according to M. d’Orbigny, in still lower strata, we may conclude, that at this ancient period a great expanse of water was surrounded by the same rocky framework which now bounds the plains of Pampean formation. This having been the case, the circumstance of sediment of the same nature having been deposited in the same area during an immense lapse of time, though highly remarkable, does not appear incredible.

The elevation of the Pampas, at least of the southern parts, has been slow and interrupted by several periods of rest, as may be inferred from the plains, cliffs, and lines of sand-dunes (with shells and pumice-pebbles) standing at different heights. I believe, also, that the Pampean mud continued to be deposited, after parts of this formation had already been elevated, in the same manner as mud would continue to be deposited in the estuary of the Plata, if the mud-banks on its shores were now uplifted and changed into plains: I believe in this from the improbability of so many skeletons and bones having been accumulated at one spot, where M. Hermoso now stands, at a depth of between eight hundred and one thousand feet, and at a vast distance from any land except small rocky islets,—as must have been the case, if the high tosca-plain round the Ventana and adjoining Sierras, had not been already uplifted and converted into land, supporting mammiferous animals. At Punta Alta we have good evidence that the gravel- strata, which certainly belong to the true Pampean period, were accumulated after the elevation in that neighbourhood of the main part of the Pampean deposit, whence the rounded masses of tosca-rock were derived, and that rolled fragment of black bone in the same peculiar condition with the remains at Monte Hermoso.

The number of the mammiferous remains embedded in the Pampas is, as I have remarked, wonderful: it should be borne in mind that they have almost exclusively been found in the cliffs and steep banks of rivers, and that, until lately, they excited no attention amongst the inhabitants: I am firmly convinced that a deep trench could not be cut in any line across the Pampas, without intersecting the remains of some quadruped. It is difficult to form an opinion in what part of the Pampas they are most numerous; in a limited spot they could not well have been more numerous than they were at P. Alta; the number, however, lately found by Senor F. Muniz, near Luxan, in a central spot in the Pampas, is extraordinarily great: at the end of this chapter I will give a list of all the localities at which I have heard of remains having been discovered. Very frequently the remains consist of almost perfect skeletons; but there are, also, numerous single bones, as for instance at St. Fe. Their state of preservation varies much, even when embedded near each other: I saw none others so perfectly preserved as the heads of the Toxodon and Mylodon from the white soft earthy bed on the Sarandis in Banda Oriental. It is remarkable that in two limited sections I found no less than five teeth separately embedded, and I heard of teeth having been similarly found in other parts: may we suppose that the skeletons or heads were for a long time gently drifted by currents over the soft muddy bottom, and that the teeth occasionally, here and there, dropped out?

It may be naturally asked, where did these numerous animals live? From the remarkable discoveries of MM. Lund and Clausen, it appears that some of the species found in the Pampas inhabited the highlands of Brazil: the Mastodon Andium is embedded at great heights in the Cordillera from north of the equator to at least as far south as Tarija (Humboldt states that the Mastodon has been discovered in New Granada: it has been found in Quito. When at Lima, I saw a tooth of a Mastodon in the possession of Don M. Rivero, found at Playa Chica on the Maranon, near the Guallaga. Every one has heard of the numerous remains of Mastodon in Bolivia.); and as there is no higher land, there can be little doubt that this Mastodon must have lived on the plains and valleys of that great range. These countries, however, appear too far distant for the habitation of the individuals entombed in the Pampas: we must probably look to nearer points, for instance to the province of Corrientes, which, as already remarked, is said not to be covered by the Pampean formation, and may therefore, at the period of its deposition, have existed as dry land. I have already given my reasons for believing that the animals embedded at M. Hermoso and at P. Alta in Bahia Blanca, lived on adjoining land, formed of parts of the already elevated Pampean deposit. With respect to the food of these many great extinct quadrupeds, I will not repeat the facts given in my “Journal” (second edition page 85), showing that there is no correlation between the luxuriance of the vegetation of a country and the size of its mammiferous inhabitants. I do not doubt that large animals could now exist, as far as the amount, not kind, of vegetation is concerned, on the sterile plains of Bahia Blanca and of the R. Negro, as well as on the equally, if not more sterile plains of Southern Africa. The climate, however, may perhaps have somewhat deteriorated since the mammifers embedded at Bahia Blanca lived there; for we must not infer, from the continued existence of the same shells on the present coasts, that there has been no change in climate; for several of these shells now range northward along the shores of Brazil, where the most luxuriant vegetation flourishes under a tropical temperature. With respect to the extinction, which at first fills the mind with astonishment, of the many great and small mammifers of this period, I may also refer to the work above cited (second edition page 173), in which I have endeavoured to show, that however unable we may be to explain the precise cause, we ought not properly to feel more surprised at a species becoming extinct than at one being rare; and yet we are accustomed to view the rarity of any particular species as an ordinary event, not requiring any extraordinary agency.

The several mammifers embedded in the Pampean formation, which mostly belong to extinct genera, and some even to extinct families or orders, and which differ nearly, if not quite, as much as do the Eocene mammifers of Europe from living quadrupeds having existed contemporaneously with mollusca, all still inhabiting the adjoining sea, is certainly a most striking fact. It is, however, far from being an isolated one; for, during the late tertiary deposits of Britain, an elephant, rhinoceros, and hippopotamus co-existed with many recent land and fresh-water shells; and in North America, we have the best evidence that a mastodon, elephant, megatherium, megalonyx, mylodon, an extinct horse and ox, likewise co- existed with numerous land, fresh-water, and marine recent shells. (Many original observations, and a summary on this subject, are given in Mr. Lyell’s paper in the “Geological Proceedings” volume 4 page 3 and in his “Travels in North America” volume 1 page 164 and volume 2 page 60. For the European analogous cases see Mr. Lyell’s “Principles of Geology” 6th edition volume 1 page 37.) The enumeration of these extinct North American animals naturally leads me to refer to the former closer relation of the mammiferous inhabitants of the two Americas, which I have discussed in my “Journal,” and likewise to the vast extent of country over which some of them ranged: thus the same species of the Megatherium, Megalonyx, Equus (as far as the state of their remains permits of identification), extended from the Southern United States of North America to Bahia Blanca, in latitude 39 degrees S., on the coast of Patagonia. The fact of these animals having inhabited tropical and temperate regions, does not appear to me any great difficulty, seeing that at the Cape of Good Hope several quadrupeds, such as the elephant and hippopotamus, range from the equator to latitude 35 degrees south. The case of the Mastodon Andium is one of more difficulty, for it is found from latitude 36 degrees S., over, as I have reason to believe, nearly the whole of Brazil, and up the Cordillera to regions which, according to M. d’Orbigny, border on perpetual snow, and which are almost destitute of vegetation: undoubtedly the climate of the Cordillera must have been different when the mastodon inhabited it; but we should not forget the case of the Siberian mammoth and rhinoceros, as showing how severe a climate the larger pachydermata can endure; nor overlook the fact of the guanaco ranging at the present day over the hot low deserts of Peru, the lofty pinnacles of the Cordillera, and the damp forest-clad land of Southern Tierra del Fuego; the puma, also, is found from the equator to the Strait of Magellan, and I have seen its footsteps only a little below the limits of perpetual snow in the Cordillera of Chile.

At the period, so recent in a geological sense, when these extinct mammifers existed, the two Americas must have swarmed with quadrupeds, many of them of gigantic size; for, besides those more particularly referred to in this chapter, we must include in this same period those wonderfully numerous remains, some few of them specifically, and others generically related to those of the Pampas, discovered by MM. Lund and Clausen in the caves of Brazil. Finally, the facts here given show how cautious we ought to be in judging of the antiquity of a formation from even a great amount of difference between the extinct and living species in any one class of animals;—we ought even to be cautious in accepting the general proposition, that change in organic forms and lapse of time are at all, necessarily, correlatives.

LOCALITIES WITHIN THE REGION OF THE PAMPAS WHERE GREAT BONES HAVE BEEN FOUND.

The following list, which includes every account which I have hitherto met with of the discovery of fossil mammiferous remains in the Pampas, may be hereafter useful to a geologist investigating this region, and it tends to show their extraordinary abundance. I heard of and saw many fossils, the original position of which I could not ascertain; and I received many statements too vague to be here inserted. Beginning to the south:—we have the two stations in Bahia Blanca, described in this chapter, where at P. Alta, the Megatherium, Megalonyx, Scelidotherium, Mylodon, Holophractus (or an allied genus), Toxodon, Macrauchenia, and an Equus were collected; and at M. Hermoso a Ctenomys, Hydrochaerus, some other rodents and the bones of a great megatheroid quadruped. Close north-east of the S. Tapalguen, we have the Rios ‘Huesos’ (i.e. “bones”), which probably takes its name from large fossil bones. Near Villa Nuevo, and at Las Averias, not far from the Salado, three nearly perfect skeletons, one of the Megatherium, one of the Glyptodon clavipes, and one of some great Dasypoid quadruped, were found by the agent of Sir W. Parish (see his work “Buenos Ayres” etc. page 171). I have seen the tooth of a Mastodon from the Salado; a little northward of this river, on the borders of a lake near the G. del Monte, I saw many bones, and one large piece of dermal armour; higher up the Salado, there is a place called Monte “Huesos.” On the Matanzas, about twenty miles south of Buenos Ayres, the skeleton (vide page 178 of “Buenos Ayres” etc. by Sir W. Parish) of a Glyptodon was found about five feet beneath the surface; here also (see Catalogue of Royal College of Surgeons) remains of Glyptodon clavipes, G. ornatus, and G. reticulatus were found. Signor Angelis, in a letter which I have seen, refers to some great remains found in Buenos Ayres, at a depth of twenty varas from the surface. Seven leagues north of this city the same author found the skeletons of Mylodon robustus and Glyptodon ornatus. From this neighbourhood he has lately sent to the British Museum the following fossils:—Remains of three or four individuals of Megatherium; of three species of Glyptodon; of three individuals of the Mastodon Andium; of Macrauchenia; of a second species of Toxodon, different from T. Platensis; and lastly, of the Machairodus, a wonderful large carnivorous animal. M. d’Orbigny has lately received from the Recolate “Voyage” Pal. page 144), near Buenos Ayres, a tooth of Toxodon Platensis.

Proceeding northward, along the west bank of the Parana, we come to the Rio Luxan, where two skeletons of the Megatherium have been found; and lately, within eight leagues of the town of Luxan, Dr. F. X. Muniz has collected (“British Packet” Buenos Ayres September 25, 1841), from an average depth of eighteen feet, very numerous remains, of no less than, as he believes, nine distinct species of mammifers. At Areco, large bones have been found, which are believed, by the inhabitants, to have been changed from small bones, by the water of the river! At Arrecifes, the Glyptodon, sent to the College of Surgeons, was found; and I have seen two teeth of a Mastodon from this quarter. At S. Nicolas, M. d’Orbigny found remains of a Canis, Ctenomys, and Kerodon; and M. Isabelle (“Voyage” page 332) refers to a gigantic Armadillo found there. At S. Carlos, I heard of great bones. A little below the mouth of the Carcarana, the two skeletons of Mastodon were found; on the banks of this river, near S. Miguel, I found teeth of the Mastodon and Toxodon; and “Falkner” (page 55) describes the osseous armour of some great animal; I heard of many other bones in this neighbourhood. I have seen, I may add, in the possession of Mr. Caldcleugh, the tooth of a Mastodon Andium, said to have been found in Paraguay; I may here also refer to a statement in this gentleman’s travels (volume 1 page 48), of a great skeleton having been found in the province of Bolivia in Brazil, on the R. de las Contas. The furthest point westward in the Pampas, at which I have HEARD of fossil bones, was high up on the banks of R. Quinto.

In Entre Rios, besides the remains of the Mastodon, Toxodon, Equus, and a great Dasypoid quadruped near St. Fe Bajada, I received an account of bones having been found a little S.E. of P. Gorda (on the Parana), and of an entire skeleton at Matanzas, on the Arroyo del Animal.

In Banda Oriental, besides the remains of the Toxodon, Mylodon, and two skeletons of great animals with osseous armour (distinct from that of the Glyptodon), found on the Arroyos Sarandis and Berquelo, M. Isabelle (“Voyage” page 322) says, many bones have been found near the R. Negro, and on the R. Arapey, an affluent of the Paraguay, in latitude 30 degrees 40 minutes south. I heard of bones near the source of the A. Vivoras. I saw the remains of a Dasypoid quadruped from the Arroyo Seco, close to M. Video; and M. d’Orbigny refers (“Voyage” Geolog. page 24), to another found on the Pedernal, an affluent of the St. Lucia; and Signor Angelis, in a letter, states that a third skeleton of this family has been found, near Canelones. I saw a tooth of the Mastodon from Talas, another affluent of the St. Lucia. The most eastern point at which I heard of great bones having been found, was at Solis Grande, between M. Video and Maldonado.

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