364 



THE MUSEUM. 



plorers are forced to seek this precious 

 liquid at a distance of twenty leagues 

 and to carry it upon mule-back. The 

 landscape, as in all Southern Patagon- 

 ia, is despite the absence of forests, 

 very picturesque by reason of its brok- 

 en aspect, which makes it resemble a 

 country in ruins. Everything indicates 

 that this country was at a former 

 epoch, deeply furrowed by water that 

 flowed toward the sea, in consequence 

 of an uplifting of land that exposed 

 the strata which contained the fossils 

 under consideration. 



These strata are probably of the 

 Eocene epoch and are called Pyther- 

 ium, from the name of a large herbi- 

 vorous mammal whose remains are 

 found in abundance in the sandy and 

 friable soil of this now dried np region. 

 As in the Bad Lands of the Western 

 Territories of the United States, it is 

 not nesessary to excavate the earth to 

 a depth in order to find fossils, for the 

 bones of large extinct animals are 

 often found exposed upon the side of 

 the declivities that border the road 

 followed by travellers, and offer an 

 easy booty to the paleontologist who 

 may know their value and who for 

 the first time travels over this wild 

 country. 



It was thus that Mr. Amegh/no was 

 enabled to collect the valuable remains 

 that permitted of reconstructing a 

 fauna that long ago disappeared. 

 Some crania, some broken bills, some 

 wing bones and some legs, often al- 

 most intact, give us an idta of the 

 strength and proportions of these great 

 birds. More than fifteen species of 

 various sizes have been described. 



The Phororhacos inflatus is the best 

 known species. Of this we have an 

 entire skull, with its lower mandible, 



the bones of the legs and wings, the 

 pelvis and some of the vertebrae of the 

 neck and tail. Although it is not the 

 largest species, it merits a few words, 

 since a study of its characters gives us 

 quite a clear idaa of its organization 

 and habits. 



The bill is remarkably thick verti- 

 cally and very much compressed later- 

 ally, like that of the rapacious birds. 

 The hollow that precedes this hook 

 presents two small teeth. If we com- 

 pare this bill with that of our present 

 birds, we shall have to set aside the 

 vultures and other rapacious birds, all 

 of which have well developed wings, 

 and also the baloeniceps and the can- 

 eroma, whose wide and depressed bill 

 resembles that of the phororhacos only 

 in the terminal hook. But there is 

 one bird not long extinct that exhibits 

 undoubted affinities with the latter, at 

 least by the form of its bill; we refer 

 to the Didus ineptus, a large bird in- 

 capable of flight, which was still living 

 on Mauritus Island during the course 

 of the seventeenth century. This 

 bird attained the size of a swan, but 

 was of much heavier build. It is said 

 that it fed upon vegetable substances, 

 such as fruits and roots. It was a 

 stupid animal and a poor runner, and 

 this explains its rapid destruction, be- 

 ginning from the time at which the 

 Mascarene Islands were occupied by 

 the Dutch in i 598. Less than a cen- 

 tury afterward the species was com- 

 pletely extinct. 



Although the phororhacos resembled 

 the didus in its bill, it differed from 

 the latter in the form of the pelvis, 

 which was much narrower than that of 

 the didus, and which indicates a light- 

 er bird. In this respect the phoror- 

 hacos more closely resembled the 



