November 2, 191 1] 



NATURE 



the significance and importance of this fateful dis- 

 covery — for sucli I believe it to have been — has to some 

 extent been overlooked; but concerning the time and 

 place that it was made, and all the circumstances 

 connected with it, we fortunately have ample informa- 

 tion. 



During the first six months that he spent in South 

 America (March to September, 1832), Darwin tells us 

 that he had "procured a nearly perfect collection of 

 mammals, birds, and reptiles " in the districts around 

 his two great centres of work at this time, namely, 

 Botofogo Bay, near Rio de Janeiro, and Maldanado, 

 near Monte Video.* In doing this he could not fail 

 to be greatly struck by the peculiarities of the fauna, 

 with its sloths, ant-eaters, and armadilloes. From the 

 journals both of Fitzroy and Darwin, we learn that 

 questions concerning the several species of armadilloes 

 and their geographical range were a't this time engag- 

 ing their attention.^ 



It fortunately happened that, during the autumn 

 of 1832, the Beagle was delayed for some weeks in 

 Blanco Bay. The energetic 5^oung captain (Fitzroy 

 was at this time twenty-seven years of age, only four 

 years older than Darwin himself), finding that, in his 

 own ship, he could not safely survey the shallow 

 waters of the South American coast, purchased, at 

 his own expense, two tiny undecked sealing craft and 

 placed them under the command of two of his officers 

 who volunteered for the service. While the alteration, 

 refitting, and rigging of these dirty little vessels was 

 in progress, the Beagle was delayed at her anchorage, 

 and Darwin found an opportunity of which he took 

 splendid advantage. 



Near Punta Alta, on the shores of the Bay of 

 Bahia Blanco, there is a cliff about 20 feet high 

 extending for the distance of a mile ; the beds exposed 

 in this cliff consist of false-bedded gravel, sand, and 

 marl, in which were many shells which Darwin 

 recognised as belonging to existing species. But in 

 the midst of these sands and gravels could be seen a 

 lenticular bed of red mud, in which the bones of 

 gVeat quadrupeds occurred in such abundance that 

 remains of nine large mammals were disinterred from 

 an area of 200 square yards. ^^ 



Under the date of September, 1832, Captain Fitzroy 

 wrote in his journal as follows : — 



"My friend's" (Darwin's) "attention was soon 

 attracted to some cliffs near Point Alta, where he 

 found some of those huge fossil bones, described in 

 his work, and notwithstanding our smiles at the cargo 

 of apparent rubbish which he frequently brought on 

 board, he and his servant used their pick-axes in 

 earnest,, and brought away what have since proved 

 to be most interesting and valuable remains of extinct 

 animals." " 



Doubtless, while his other shipmates were content 

 with exhibiting mild amusement at the eagerness of 

 "the Flycatcher," as Darwin was called by them, the 

 martinet first-lieutenant, as is recorded in the " Life 

 and Letters," would be moved to wrath by the state 

 to which his decks were being reduced by these 

 strange proceedings, and driven to emplov" choice 



nautical language concerning "the d d beastly 



devilment." not forgetting to add. "If I were skipper, 

 I would soon have you and all your beastly mess out 

 of the place." ^^ 



It was probably on this occasion that Darwin 

 experienced those pangs of "despair with which he 

 had to break off the projecting end of a huge, partly 



^ '' Tournal of the Rea^le " (1839), p. 46. 



"Voyages of the Adventure and Beadle" \o\. ii., p. 107; vol. iii., 

 p. Ti:!. * ' . K / , I 



11 '' Jjeological Observations on South America " (1846), pp. 82-85. 

 w ,,y?va?es of the Adventure and Beadle" vol. ii., pp. 106-7. 

 " Life and Letters of Charles Dar'vin." vol. i., p. 223. 



NO. 2192, VOL. 88] 



excavated, bone, when the boat waiting for him would 

 wait no longer "—a sorrow which, as his son tells 

 us, he often recalled and spoke of in after-Ufe." 



We must bear in mind that Darwin collected from 

 this treasure-house of mammalian remains at Punta 

 Alta on two different occasions, first in September, 

 1832, and secondly in August, 1833. 



That it was on the f,yst of these occasions "the 

 gigantic piece of armour like that of the armadilloes 

 was procured " is fortunately proved by a letter 

 written by Darwin to Henslow, dated November 24, 

 1S32, and communicated to the Cambridge Philo- 

 sophical Society before the Beagle had returned to 

 England. 1* The opportunities which the young 

 naturalist then enjoyed of having boats and men at 

 his disposal to transport these great bones of the 

 Pampas formation to the ship, appear to have been 

 unique. 



In the very important letter to which I refer, Dar- 

 win speaks of finding "fragments of at least six 

 different animals," including " a large surface of the 

 osseous polygonal plates, which ' late observations ' 

 (what are they?) show belong to Megatherium.'''' In 

 writing thus, Darwin was evidently, to some extent, 

 the victim of a mistake into which naturalists had 

 been betrayed at the beginning of last century. 

 Whether, in using the words, placed between inverted 

 commas by him, Darwin was quoting from some 

 author, I have vainly endeavoured to discover by an 

 examination of the books which he would probably 

 have in his little library on the Beagle ; but the 

 query, which he puts in brackets, clearly shows that 

 he suspected that an error had been committed. And 

 this conclusion is confirmed by the sentence which 

 follows : — 



"Immediately I saw this I thought they must be- 

 long to an enormous armadillo, living species of which 

 genus are so abundant here." 



The history of the origin and spread of the idea 

 that the dermal armour of the Glyptodonts belonged 

 to the Megatherium is a very curious one. 



It has been suggested that Dr. Buckland was re- 

 sponsible for the unfortunate error, ^' but the passage 

 quoted in support of this view is taken from the 

 " Bridgewater Treatise," which was not published 

 until 1836, and indeed contains a reference to Darwin's 

 own work in South America. Buckland, like other 

 geologists and zoologists of that day, merely followed 

 the lead of Cuvier in this matter. 



The remains of the gigantic fossil sloths of South 

 America had found their way to Europe before the 

 end of the eighteenth century, and both Megatherium 

 and Mylodon were described by Cuvier in his " Osse- 

 mens fossiles " in 1812. But while preparing the fifth 

 volume of the second edition of that great work in 

 1823, he received from a colleague, the botanist 

 August de Saint-Hilaire, a letter sent with specimens 

 from South America, by D. Damasio Larranaga, cur^ 

 de Montevideo. This letter, apparently without being 

 carefully scrutinised by Cuvier and his assistants, was 

 printed in a footnote,'" and contains the words "Je 

 ne vous ^cris point sur mon dasypus (Megatherium, 

 Cuv.)." The worthy priest, who was evidently not a 

 zooloirist. confounded Dasypus (the armadillo) w^ith 

 the Megatherium ; and, strange to say. Cuvier not 

 only allowed the passage to stand, but added the 

 suggestion that Megatherium might have possessed 

 bony armour like the armadillo, and that he awaited 

 impatientlv further information on the subject from 

 Larranaga. As bones of the giant sloths from South 



1^ Th'd.. vol. i., p. 276, note. 



1* This letter was read at a meeting held on November 16, 1835, and was 

 privately printed. 

 1" "More Letters of Charles Darwin," vol. i., p. la, note. 

 J*! "Ossemens fossiles," second ed., vol. v. (1823), p. \q\, footnote. 



