Holland: Fossil ATammals. 225 



Waring, the remains were uncovered by some workmen, who were 

 engaged in enlarging and cleaning out a " water-hole," to which it 

 was their custom to drive cattle to drink. The supply of water in 

 this region, as the foregoing paper shows, is very limited, and wells 

 are evidently as precious as they were in Palestine in the days of the 

 Biblical Patriarchs. Professor J. C. Branner in The American 

 Journal of Science, 1902, pp. 133-137, has brought together a number 

 of references to the occurrence of fossil mammalian remains found 

 under like circumstances at other localities in the same general 

 region. He tells us that at Lagoa da Lagea, a spot about about two 

 hundred miles to the northeast of Pedra Vermelha, about a ton of 

 fossil bones and teeth were excavated in 1873 during the digging of a 

 reservoir upon this cattle-ranch. He subsequently visited the spot 

 and gathered together enough of the material to make loads for three 

 horses, and sent what he had picked up to the Geological Museum at 

 Rio de Janeiro. He tells us that the bones were worn and abraded, 

 as if they had been trampled under foot by other animals long before 

 they were excavated. He states that they were the bones of large 

 animals, of which only those of a mastodon were identified. A human 

 artefact in the form of a stone pestle was reported to have been found 

 associated with these remains. Dr. Branner mentions another 

 locality, not far distant from Lagoa da Lagea, named Lagoa Cavada, 

 where the discovery of fossil bones was reported to have occurred, 

 but where his personal examination failed to reveal their presence. 

 He tells us that " many cases have been reported of finding such 

 remains under similar circumstances in the States of Alagoas, Per- 

 nambuco, Parahyba, Rio Grande do Norte, and Ceara, and it seems 

 probable that they may be found throughout the entire area of Brazil 

 that is subject to droughts." 



That these fossils are of Pleistocene age seems not to admit of 

 question. They occur in beds of gravel lying in depressions of the 

 primitive rocks, granite and gneiss, in which soil formed by erosion 

 has gathered, and which undoubtedly contained long, ago, as they 

 still contain, accumulated surface-water. The animals of the past 

 resorted to these drinking places and died there, as do the cattle today, 

 in periods of drought. The conditions were evidently such as J. W. 

 Gregory, ^'' quoted by Dr. Branner,^** points out to be still the case in 



'■>' J. W. Gregory, The Great Rift Valley, 1896, pp. 268-9. 



5* J, C. Branner, American Journal of Science, (4) XIII, 1902, p. 137. 



ANN. CAR. MUS., XIII, 15, DEC. 10, I92O. 



