HRDLi^KA] STONE INDUSTRIES OF THE ARGENTINE COAST 149 



Besides we should also inquire as to where dwellers on the land 

 surface exposed during either of the periods referred to could have 

 obtained the pebbles which now occur only along the present beach. 

 Can we explain the manner in which a people occupying a Pliocene 

 horizon, for example (which, to accommodate these inhabitants, 

 must have had for the time a suitable land surface), obtained a 

 supply of pebbles belonging in underlying beds of an earlier period, 

 since none occur, so far as Hrdlicka and Willis have observed, in 

 contemporaneous or superior formations. Is it to be assumed that 

 the tribes of that time found the seashore with its bluffs and seaward 

 slopes and supply of pebbles conveniently exposed as they are to-day 

 and all along a line connecting Mar del Plata with Bahia Blanca ? 



Questions like these can readily be asked, but not so readily 

 answered, and since the writer has great difficulty in answering them 

 affirmatively, he finds it necessary to adopt the view that the tribes 

 responsible for the several groups of relics collected by Hrdlicka and 

 Willis along the Argentine littoral occupied the various sites visited 

 in recent centuries, under conditions corresponding in all essen- 

 tial respects with those of the present day. Nothing short of per- 

 fectly authenticated finds of objects of art in undisturbed forma- 

 tions of fully established geologic age will justify science in accepting 

 the theory of Quaternary or Tertiary occu])ants for Argentine. 



The writer has pleasure in observing that Dr. Felix F. Outes, of the 

 National University, La Plata, Argentina, has given careful attention 

 to the antiquities of the pampean coast and to the relation of these 

 to the several geologic formations, and after visiting and thoroughly 

 examining all the more important sites, has presented the whole 

 group of phenomena in a way that in the end, with possibly slight 

 exceptions, must meet with general approval. '^ 



Subsequent to the completion of the foregoing pages Doctor 

 Hrdlicka drew attention to certain specimens collected by him along 

 the barranca at Monte Hermoso, which had escaped particular notice 

 on the writer's part. Attention was directed also to a brief pam- 

 phlet just received from Doctor Ameghino,^ describing a series of 

 similar specimens collected by liim while examining this same bar- 

 ranca in company with Doctor Hrdhcka. Considering the nature of 

 the specimens and the manner of their occurrence, the observations 

 and interpretation of Doctor Ameghino are so remarkable that the 

 writer is constrained to refer to them in some detail. 



The objects in question are about 20 freshly-fractured chips and 

 fragments of coarse, partially fire-reddened quartzite, a larger frag- 



i Outes, F61ix F., Sobre una facies local de los instrumentos neolitieos Bonaerenses; in Revista del Museo 

 de La Plata, xvi, Buenos Aires, 1909. 



2 Ameghino, Florentine, La industria de la piedra quebrada en el niioceno superior de Monte Heimoso, 

 Buenos Aires, 1910. 



