HRDLiL'KA] SKELETAL EEMAINS OF EARLY MAN 187 



"Many times the bones of these animals are encountered in what 

 were originally Pampean deposits, but which have been moved and 

 reaccumulated along the banks of the streams; or they are found 

 interred in the vegetal soil mixed with sand from the channels of 

 those streams. I myself have gathered bones of a mylodon, which, 

 displaced from the great Pampean mass, have been brought into such 

 accumulations in the way just named. 



"The main reason of the announcements of such discoveries 

 is, I am forced to say, the avidity with which certain persons, particu- 

 larly those who in the Province of Buenos Aires occupy themselves with 

 the collection of fossils for sale, desire to discover fossil man in the 

 pampa. Kelying on the great similarities of the works of the primi- 

 tive man in Europe and those of the present natives in some parts 

 of the South American continent, they believe themselves authorized 

 in attributing the remains of the work of man distributed along 

 the banks of the streams and lakes as well as among the sand dunes 

 of the Atlantic coast, to an epoch contemporaneous with that of 

 the cave man in Europe. I, myself, have had occasion to examine, 

 although without much detail, the remains of the skull of an indi- 

 vidual said to be fossil and alleged to have been found beneatli 

 the carapace of a glyptodon; but these remains had a great resem- 

 blance to some crania of the Tehuelche Indians of the period before 

 the Conquest collected by myself along the southern bank of the 

 Rio Negro. The wear of the teeth of the specimen, as well as 

 that of the teeth pictured and described by Gervais (1S73) is also 

 characteristic of the Rio Negro skulls which I have mentioned 

 and of those of the other primitive (but not fossil) races of our 

 land. I believe that the remains and objects described by Professor 

 Gervais and belonging to the collection of fossils which Seguin 

 sokl to the Museum of Paris, as well as the other human remains 

 which, as I said above, I had the occasion to examine, belonged to 

 some of the tribes which inhabited these regions before the Spanish 

 occupation. 



[p. 132] "Leaving aside, then, finds which prove only that man 

 was here a witness of the formation of the last alluvial deposits, 

 it is necessary that there be discovered in abundance and by competent 

 persons, human remains, together with products of man's industry, 

 in diverse parts of this Province, in undisturbed deposits. . . . 



"The objects encountered up to this moment by the persons 

 alluded to, and those which I myself have gathered in some of my 

 excursions in search of fossil mammals, show the domestic and 

 industrial status of those who first peopled our territory, namely, 

 the bellicose Querandi, who inhabited the site where, in 1535, Buenos 

 Aires was founded, and who were forcibly expelled from their lands 

 by the first Spanish expedition." 



