442 Mr. C. C.Blake on the Discovery of Macrauchenia in 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 

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

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

 soil with Mastodon Humboldtii, Scelidotherium, Megatherium, 

 three species of true Auchenia, Eguus macrognathus vel neogtms, 

 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 of 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 

 Illimani*. 



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 predicted 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, 

 Lend. 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 BoUaert have been unknown to Messrs. Forbes and 

 Huxley. 



