PREVIOUS TO THE LAST GEOLOGICAL REVOLUTION. 383 



of South America's antediluvian fauna that was submitted to 

 that great zoologist's notice {Mastodon angustidens) came 

 under this category. It is easy to conceive that such a cir- 

 cumstance should excite in that deep philosopher especial 

 attention to this continent and its ancient inhabitants ; and 

 in fact it did raise doubts in his mind of the existence at that 

 period of the Atlantic Ocean, in its present boundary and posi- 

 tion, at least. Meanwhile T must remark, that the supposition 

 of this specific correspondence is founded on so few means of 

 comparison, that we are bound, by the importance of the con- 

 clusion, to suspend our decision until further inquiries shall 

 enable us to come to it with greater certainty : but in what- 

 ever way this question may eventually be decided, I do not 

 conceive that this isolated, though confessedly important 

 phaenomenon can with any justice throw doubt on the cor- 

 rectness of the above-given result, to which all our other 

 knowledge of the extinct fauna of this continent has con- 

 ducted us. 



After this glance at the ancient temperature of our globe, 

 and the form of its continents, I proceed to consider the re- 

 sults, to which the facts brought forward in this paper may 

 lead us, with reference to the nature of the great catastrophe 

 which overwhelmed the animal race, whose remains we have 

 been considering. I have shown in my previous communi- 

 cation that the surface of this district, throughout that part 

 which I have visited, consists of loose soil of different quali- 

 ties, 'among which a red clay is most conspicuous, that often 

 contains beds of rolled or angular fragments of quartz ; 

 again, that this same soil fills up all the clefts and cavities 

 in the rocks ; and that it is in this deposit of soil within the 

 caves that the bones of the extinct animals are found ; that 

 the bones lie scattered without order in the soil, often in 

 astonishing quantities, and that for the most part they are 

 broken or injured in various ways. Now if we collect under 

 one point of view all these several circumstances (for the de- 

 tailed consideration of which I refer to my former paper), it 

 is evident that there is but one natural solution of them. The 

 caverns, wherein we find these heaps of bones, served for 

 dens to predatory animals in the ancient time ; and the 

 bones that occur there, are the remains of animals that formed 

 their prey. The injuries to which the bones have been ex- 

 posed, leave no room for doubt upon the subject. These 

 bones then, and fragments of bones, lay heaped up on the 

 floor of the caves, when a vast deluge which covered the whole 

 land with the deep stratum of loose soil that we now see to 

 overspread its entire surface, violently burst into the caverns. 



