442 Mr. C. C. Blake on the Discovery of Macrauchenia m Bolivia. 



leave the reader under the impression that remains of Macrau- 

 chenia patachonica are yet undiscovered in Bolivia, I must re- 

 spectfully indicate to those readers of your valuable periodical 

 who are unacquainted with the fact, that Dr. Weddell, writing 

 in Castelnau's ' Expedition dans les Parties centrales de I'Ame- 

 rique du Sud/ 4to, Paris, 1855, states, on page 36 of the 

 7th Partie (Zoologie), and on page 203 of the 6th volume of the 

 ' Histoirc du Voyage,^ 8vo, Paris, 1851, that bones of Macrau- 

 chenia were found at Tarija, in South Bolivia, imbedded in the 

 soil with Mastodon Humboldtii, Scelidutherium, Megatherium, 

 three species of true Auchenia, Eguus macrognathus vel neogcBUS, 

 Ursus, &c. He does not specifically distinguish them from M. 

 patachonica, and figures them under that name on plate 8 of the 

 7th Part. If the remains described by Prof. Huxley should prove 

 to be of a distinct species, the fact would be not merely that " a 

 small and a large species of Auchenoid mammal ranged the moun- 

 tains and the plains of South America respectively,^^ but that two 

 nearly similar species oi Macrauchenia co-existed in the highlands 

 of Bolivia during the post-pleistocene epoch. As Tarija, on the 

 eastern slopes of the Bolivian Andes, is almost beyond the limits 

 of the geographical range of the Guanaco, which is by no means 

 such a denizen of the plains as Prof. Huxley would infer, the 

 existence of a fossil Auchenoid mammal (a so-called " hueso de 

 gigante ") at that place is a fact of much more importance than 

 the existence of a similar animal at Corocoro, in the elevated 

 valleys of the Aymara country, at the foot of the enormous 

 niimani*. 



The specific name boliviensis, applied by Prof. Huxley to the 

 smaller form, will no doubt be abrogated by succeeding natu- 

 ralists, as founded on a misconception of the geographical dis- 

 tribution of the genus. 



Prof. Huxley, impugning the philosophical laws of "cor- 

 relation of structure " as defined by Cuvier and Owen, suggests 

 that, upon the Cuvierian method of induction, a palaeontologist, 

 reasoning alone from the cervical vertebrae of Macrauchenia, 

 would have confidently ])redicted its Cameloid affinities. But 

 when Prof. Huxley founds an argument, put hypothetically into 

 the mouth of an ideal adversary, upon a structure so liable to 



* As Mr. Forbes, in the memoir preceding Prof. Huxley's, mentions at 

 great length the Salinas, the volcanic origin of common salt, and the 

 physical geography of Peru and Bolivia, I may be permitted to indicate 

 that much valuable information on these subjects is to be found in Mr. 

 William Bollaert's ' Antiquities and Ethnology of South America,' 8vo, 

 Lond. 1860, and in his paper in the ' Journal of the Royal Geographical 

 Society,' vol. xxi. 1851, with map. Apparently the researches of both 

 MM. Castelnau and Bollaert have been unknown to Messrs. Forbes and 

 Huxley. 



