62 Geology of South America. 



bed the remains which Humboldt noticed in other parts of the 

 Andes. It is known that that ilkistrious traveller collected 

 in 1802, on the plateau of Quito, teeth of elephants and mas- 

 todons, which were examined by Cuvier. Probably the teeth 

 brought home by Dombey the traveller, came from the same 

 localities. Humboldt likewise discovered the teeth of Mas- 

 todon angustidens near Santa-Fe de Bogota, in Columbia, and 

 bones of elephants at Cumanacoa, near Cumana. Bones of 

 the elephant have not hitherto been found in the Pampean 

 formation, but Mr Darwin discovered in this deposit, near 

 Santa-Fe Bajada, bones of mastodons associated, and this is 

 a curious circumstance, with bones of the horse. Previously, 

 M. Auguste de Saint-Hilaire had sent to the Museum of Paris 

 a tooth of a mastodon, collected at Villa do Fanado, in Brazil. 

 MM. Clausen and Lund have subsequently examined the 

 caverns of the province of Minaes Geraes, and have collected 

 a considerable quantity of bones of quadrupeds. The number 

 of species already distinguished by them amounts to more 

 than 100. They seem to have belonged to the same fauna 

 as those whose remains occur in the Pampean deposit, for the 

 identical species of the genera Megalonyx., Megatherium,^ 

 Holophorus, and Mastodon^ present themselves simultaneously 

 in the Pampas, and in the caverns of Brazil into which the 

 Pampian mud has penetrated, and whose entrances it sur- 

 rounds. This circumstance is so much the more remarkable, 

 because it is a distance of more than 1200 miles from the 

 province of Minaes Geraes, where these caverns are, to the 

 falaises of the Parana, near San Pedro, which are the richest 

 in fossils, and because this same loam occupies an extent of 

 surface on the Pampas, chiefly to the south-west of the Parana, 

 which of itself is nearly as great as the half of France. This 

 fact harmonises with many others, tending to shew, that the 

 continent of South America is fashioned on the great scale ; 

 and that, in order to explain its origin, we can only call in the 

 aid of simple and great causes* 



To be concluded in our next Number. 



♦ Comptes Rendus de V Academic des Sciences. The Report was given in to tlie 

 Academy on the 28th August 1843. The Committee consisted of Messrs Alex- 

 andre Brongniart, Dufrenoy, and Elie de Beaumont ; tlie last-mentioned being the 

 reporter. 



