CHAPTER IV. 



Corriguen Aike; Character of the beach; Abundance of fossil bones and 

 footprints in the rocks of the beach; Collecting fossils from beneath the 

 sea; Dense fogs during month of September ; The spring tides; Actions 

 of the grebe in the surf; The sea leopard; Porpoises; A Patagonian 

 spring; Spring flowers ; Bird life in spring time; Habits of the Ibis; 

 Spur-winged plover; The grouse-like plovers of Patagonia; Water 

 fowl; Flamingoes; Upucerthia dumetoria ; Lizards and frogs ; Insects; 

 Eggs of the Rhea; Second shipment of fossils. 



ON the first of September we moved camp to Corriguen Aike, some 

 twelve miles south of Coy Inlet. On almost the very first day 

 after our arrival at this place we discovered a locality extremely 

 rich in vertebrate fossils on the beach some two miles farther north. The 

 different strata constituting the bluffs of the coast dip very gently to the 

 southeast, and the beach, as it disappears beneath the waters of the Atlantic, 

 is inclined at about the same angle as the beds. So gentle indeed is this 

 incline that between the east coast of Patagonia and the Falkland Islands 

 the sea nowhere attains a depth of more than one hundred fathoms. The 

 gentle slope of the beach, together with the enormous rise and fall of the 

 tides, amounting to over forty feet, results in a wide belt, extending sea- 

 ward from the foot of the cliffs, which is entirely submerged by the rising 

 tides and appears at low tide as a broad, shelving beach, its surface swept 

 clean by the receding waves and elevated only a few feet above the sur- 

 face of the water. In many places this beach at low tide extends seaward 

 for a distance of two miles, or even more at some points along the coast. 

 It was in the sandstones of this shelving beach, near Corriguen Aike, 

 that we discovered the rich deposit of fossil bones mentioned above. At 

 this point, as at most places throughout this beach, erosion has taken 

 place along the bedding planes, so that over considerable areas the sur- 

 face of the beach represents essentially the same geological horizon. At 

 this particular locality the dark green sandstones in which the bones were 



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