NARRATIVE 



or THE 



PRINCETON UNIVERSITY EXPEDITIONS 



TO PATAGONIA, 



MARCH, 1896, TO SEPTEMBER, 1899. 



INTRODUCTION. 



SINCE the publication of the discoveries and observations of Darwin, 

 who, as naturalist to the " Beagle," visited Patagonia in 1833-36, 

 there has existed among naturalists everywhere an intense interest 

 in the natural history of that region. This could hardly have been other- 

 \\i>e, for whatever subject or country then claimed the attention of that 

 master mind became at once invested with a peculiar interest, through the 

 links they thus formed in that long chain of observations which led to 

 those broad generalizations and deductions that, when advanced a few 

 years later, were so startling as to provoke, by their very boldness, uni- 

 versal attention. This attention at first took the form, in most instances, 

 of adverse criticism, even among scientists of repute. There were a few 

 notable exceptions like Wallace, Huxley, and Haeckel, who were not 

 slow to champion the theories advanced by Darwin, and the latter lived 

 to see the conclusions at which he had arrived with such painstaking care 

 universally accepted, even by that class of people who had at first met 

 them with ridicule and hurled at their author opprobrious epithets, for want 

 of more convincing arguments with which to refute his well-founded 

 doctrines. 



Darwin's interest in Patagonia, as in the other countries visited, was 

 of the broadest nature, and his account of the geology and natural his- 

 tory of such parts of the region as were visited by him is still and always 



