368 On the PolcBoniology of South America, 



especially in the immense depression of the Pampas, which 

 thus became the great sepulchre of the terrestrial fauna. It 

 was there also that the bones, or the entire animals themselves, 

 when they were not floated away, were thrown into the clefts 

 of the rocks, or into the deep caverns of Brazil. Were we to 

 enquire what occurred in Europe at the same epoch, we might 

 with probability associate with it the disappearance of the Ele- 

 phants, Tapirs, Rhinoceroses, Mastodons, and other terres- 

 trial animals of extinct races, which are found in the mud of 

 La Bresse (analogous to that of the Pampas), under the tra- 

 chy tic conglomerates of Auvergne, and those which later causes 

 have brought to the surface of the European soil. Such being 

 the case, the compound faunas of the great animals of the ex- 

 tinct races must have simultaneously inhabited the old and 

 new world ; and their destruction in both these great localities 

 must have arisen from the same cause, namely, the action of 

 one of the upraisings of the Cordilleras. 



After this catastrophe, the globe probably remained for a 

 long time inactive, before the great Almighty Power again 

 clothed it afresh with the vegetable and animal existences 

 which cover it at present, crowning his wonderful work by 

 forming man, and making him lord of this lower world. At 

 all events, it appears clear that if there have since been any 

 partial movements at the surface of the globe, none has been 

 sufficiently powerful to destroy the prevailing fauna. The tra- 

 dition of a deluge, which is preserved by every nation under 

 heaven, from the most civilized in Europe to the still half 

 savage American, whether in the forests or on the heights of 

 the Cordilleras, seems to be nothing more than the faint re- 

 collections of those general causes which, by the outbreak of 

 vast volcanos, induced the last great changes on the surface of 

 our globe. In America, at all events, these changes are most 

 marked ; and we must attribute to them the transport above 

 the present level of the ocean, of the fossil shells upon both 

 the eastern and western sides of South America, and especially 

 of the shells of the Pampas, which consist of none others than 

 those species which are at present inhabiting the neighbouring 

 sco-s. It is to this movement also that we must attribute those 



