:333.J ANCIENT VEGETATION. 93 



the branches down to them, and tore up the smaller ones 

 by the roots, and so fed on the leaves. The colossal breadth 

 and weight of their hinder quarters, which can hardly be 

 imagined without having been seen, become, on this view, 

 of obvious service, instead of being an encumbrance ; their 

 apparent clumsiness disappears. With their great tails and 

 their huge heels firmly fixed like a tripod on the ground, 

 they could freely exert the full force of their most powerful 

 arms and great claws. Strongly rooted, indeed, must that 

 tree have been, which could have resisted such force ! The 

 Mylodon, moreover, was furnished with a long extensile 

 tongue like that of the giraffe, which, by one of those 

 beautiful provisions of nature, thus reaches with the aid of 

 its long neck its leafy food. I may remark, that in Abyssinia 

 the elephant, according to Bruce, when it cannot reach with 

 its proboscis the branches, deeply scores with its tusks the 

 trunk of the tree, up and down and all round, till it is 

 sufficiently weakened to be broken down. 



The beds including the above fossil remains, stand only 

 from fifteen to twenty feet above the level of high-water ; 

 and hence the elevation of the land has been small (without 

 there has been an intercalated period of subsidence, of which 

 we have no evidence) since the great quadrupeds wandered 

 over the surrounding plains ; and the external features of 

 the country must then have been very nearly the same as 

 now. What, it may naturally be asked, was the character 

 of the vegetation at that period ; was the country as 

 wretchedly sterile as it now is ? As so many of the co- 

 embedded shells are the same with those now living in the 

 bay, I was at first inclined to think that the former vegeta- 

 tion was probably similar to the existing one ; but this 

 would have been an erroneous inference, for some of these 

 same shells live on the luxuriant coast of Brazil ; and 

 generally, the character of the inhabitants of the sea is 

 useless as a guide to judge of those on the land. Never- 

 theless, from the following considerations, I do not believe 

 that the simple fact of many gigantic quadrupeds having 

 lived on the plains round Bahia Blanca, is any sure guide 

 that they formerly were clothed with a luxuriant vegetation : 

 I have no doubt that the sterile country a little southward, 

 near the Rio Negro, with its scattered thorny trees, would 

 support many and large quadrupeds. 



That large animals require a luxuriant vegetation, has 



