32 bulletin: museum of comparative zoology. 



the Andesian uplift, the dissection of the surface is more complete, 

 and the descent to the bed of the Pacific Ocean is steep. 



December 8th. — The Oravia put into Coronel for a supply of coal. 

 The mines at and near Coronel are the most important on the coast of 

 South America. The principal outcrop of coal is inland, some distance 

 from the shore but the workings follow the coal beneath the sea. 

 The beds in which the coal occurs are regarded as of Eocene age. 

 (Sundt, 1908, p. 37-44). The coal is bituminous and is described as 

 bright and clean but light. The Arauco Company has produced 

 from its mines as much as 200,000 tons per annum. The coal is ex- 

 tensively used by steamers plying the west coast and in the locomo- 

 tives of the Chilean railway (Alcock, 1907, p. 85). 



Captain Oakley of the Pacific Steam Navigation Co. expressed the 

 opinion that the coast at Coronel has risen in recent years. An old 

 wreck partly buried in the beach skirting the south side of the point 

 on the north of the anchorage, according to his observation now lies 

 higher than when he first saw it. I note the opinion as a matter for 

 further investigation. 



While the steamer was taking in coal I went in a sailboat to Lota, 

 a small port about four miles south of Coronel, where coal is also 

 mined. A conglomeratic sandstone here crops out, the scattered 

 pebbles and massive bedding of which strongly suggests the trans- 

 portation of the pebbles by ice. In my hasty examination of the rock 

 I was unable to find striated pebbles. It should be noted in this 

 connection that Darwin (1846, p. 69) described "great boulders of 

 granite and other neighbouring rocks, embedded in fine sedimentary 

 layers" in Tertiary deposits along the coast of Peru. Back of 

 Coronel there are at least three terraces in the bed rock but whether 

 due to differential weathering or marine erosion at different levels I 

 was unable to determine. Along this coast towards the Tumbres 

 Peninsula there is an uplifted baselevelled surface forming a narrow 

 bench cut back and cliffed by the sea at the present level, with sub- 

 dued remnants of higher rock masses rising above the terrace as in the 

 case of the Paps of Bio Bio. This bench must be early Pleistocene or 

 late Tertiary in date. Narrow steep ravines crease the cliff face; 

 but practically no stream-cut channels cross it with their mouths at 

 sea-level. All the small vales which traverse the bench are hung up 

 at the seaward edge by reason of the cutting back of the terrace by 

 the sea. This bench is probably to be correlated with a well-defined 

 bench of erosion at Corral on the south but is much higher above the 

 sea. 



