A Trip to Mar del Plata 201 



explained to him how and where I had found the things. 

 He was quite incredulous, and maintained that in some 

 way or other I had fallen into error. What became of 

 the flint I do not know. It has disappeared, and al- 

 though I have had a careful search made in the Museum 

 and have endeavored in every way to trace it, it can- 

 not now be found. Several times before, in this very 

 neighborhood, I have found bits of pottery imbedded 

 in the Middle Pampean beds. People are incredulous. 

 They do not absolutely contradict, but they shake their 

 heads. Now you are with me, a witness to the fact 

 that this bit of a human artefact is a part of the soil 

 from which we have been digging up to-day the remains 

 of these extinct old animals. Take it up carefully. 

 Take it to the Carnegie Museum. Preserve it, as a 

 proof that at the time when the strange Pampean 

 fauna existed in this land, man also existed here.' 

 I took my pick and beginning far back I endeavored 

 to cut out a block of the loess with the potsherd still 

 embedded in it, as we had found it. I had cut away 

 on the four sides until it seemed to me that I might now 

 venture to under-cut and bring the block away, but 

 just as I was at the end of my task, the friable material 

 yielded, and broke, and unfortunately the potsherd fell 

 out of its place, the main crack having run through the 

 spot where it was lodged. I saved the pieces and the 

 sherd, anathematizing my misfortune in not having 

 had with me a solution of shellac with which to have 

 first soaked the mass, so that it would not have fallen 

 apart. But the fact is incontestable that the piece of 

 baked clay, evidently a bit of a broken earthen vessel, 

 was found undisturbed in the lower part of the Middle 

 Pampean, only a short distance from places where we 

 had found the remains of Mylodon and Megatherium. 



