12 bulletin: muselt^i of comparative zoology. 



At Taubate Station an oil shale is distilled from the Tertiary beds, 

 and Dr. Derby states that peat deposits occur near this place 



Jidij 23rd. — The day was spent in Sao Paulo. At the office of the 

 Geological and Geographical Commission of the state there is to be 

 seen a unique collection of fossil silicified wood from the Permian 

 northwest of the city and some skeletons of Stereosternum, a reptile 

 occurring in the upper Permian. Among the sections of a diamond 

 drill recently obtained from a boring in the Permian strata I detected 

 a glaciated pebble with well-defined striae in a blue tillite bed, a 

 discovery which at once promised much for the objects of the expedi- 

 tion. An excursion was made to the vicinity of the American College 

 for the purpose of studying the terra roxa which in the state of Sao 

 Paulo plays so large a role in the cultivation of the coffee plant. 



Jvly 2Ji.th.— We left Sao Paulo at an early hour by the Sorocabana 

 railroad for the end of the line at Bury. At Sao Roque the line enters 

 a valley with outcrops of slates and limestones, an apparently infolded 

 member of the Pre-Devonian terrane of which the gneisses and schists 

 of the Serra do Mar region are the most ancient parts. The railway 

 follows along the contact of the limestone with granite as far as 

 Mayrink Station, beyond which town the slate belt is followed. 

 Beyond Pantoja Station a blue limestone crops out and kilns have 

 been built for making lime. Slates and limestones continue along the 

 route to Rodovahlo Station, where there is a cement factory. From 

 Pyragibu to Sorocaba the road leaves the belt of metamorphosed 

 sediments, and passes over granites and gneisses. The disintegration 

 of the porphyritic granite, as pointed out by Dr. Derby, produces the 

 granitic surface sands known as sumarao, while weathering of a 

 deeper sort changes the granites and gneisses to a clay which from its 

 habit of balling under the shoe is called massa pe. 



From Sorocaba onward to Bury the route lay over the Permian 

 area of sandstones, shales, and intercalated tillite beds. The line 

 passes within sight of the Ypanema stock some three miles in diam- 

 eter forming a slight elevation above the general level and mainly 

 composed of eruptive rocks in the Pre-Permian terrane. The igneous 

 mass is a nepheline syenite with segregations of magnetite famous for 

 its early use as an iron ore. Ferreira says the ore was discovered 

 in 1578. At Ypanema there are quarries in a grey sandstone of the 

 Permian, and old iron furnaces, perhaps the site of the earliest pro- 

 duction of iron in America. 



Throughout the day the mainly open umvooded campos of the 

 upland, or planalto as the Brazilians term the slightly accidented 



