Buenos Aires 157 



* 



two jaguars, which had been brought down by the 

 stream, came ashore near Montevideo and were killed in 

 the outskirts of the city. At the time of these great 

 floods multitudes of snakes and other living things are 

 brought down from the tropical jungles, and species 

 not known to occur in the vicinity of Buenos Aires are 

 found at such times in considerable numbers even in 

 the streets of the city. At the time of the last freshet 

 a couple of boa-constrictors were discovered upon the 

 docks. 



We were much interested in observing the guanacos, 

 a small herd of which are kept within an enclosure. 

 They are survivors of the camel-like animals, which 

 originated in the region of the Rocky Mountains in 

 early Tertiary times, and migrated to the south after 

 the Isthmus of Panama was formed, and a land con- 

 nection between North and South America had thus 

 been provided. The tribe died out in North America, 

 but survived in South America. The true camels also 

 originated in North America and passed over into Asia 

 by way of the land-bridge, which once united the northern 

 portions of North America with Asia. They survived 

 in the eastern after they had become extinct in the 

 western hemisphere. No fossil remains of camels have 

 been found in the Old World, except the bones of the 

 existing species found in the uppermost gravels, but 

 in North America the remains of many species of camels 

 and camel oid creatures are very abundant. Only a 

 few years ago one of my associates in the Carnegie 

 Museum discovered more than twenty skeletons of a 

 very small camel buried in close proximity to each 

 other, and took them up. The skeletons of three of 

 them, a male, a female, and a half-grown individual, 

 have been mounted and are displayed in the Carnegie 



