12 BULLETIN: MUSEUM OF COMPARATIVE ZOOLOGY. 
At Taubaté Station an oil shale is distilled from the Tertiary beds, 
and Dr. Derby states that peat deposits occur near this place. 
July 23rd.— The day was spent in Sao Paulo. At the office of the 
Geological and Geographical Commission of the state there is to be 
seen a unique collection of fossil silicified wood from the Permian 
northwest of the city and some skeletons of Stereosternum, a reptile 
occurring in the upper Permian. Among the sections of a diamond 
drill recently obtained from a boring in the Permian strata I detected 
a glaciated pebble with well-defined striae in a blue tillite bed, a 
discovery which at once promised much for the objects of the expedi- 
tion. An excursion was made to the vicinity of the American College 
for the purpose of studying the terra roxa which in the state of Sao 
Paulo plays so large a role in the cultivation of the coffee plant. 
July 24th.— We left Sao Paulo at an early hour by the Sorocabana 
railroad for the end of the line at Bury. At Sao Roque the line enters 
a valley with outcrops of slates and limestones, an apparently infolded 
member of the Pre-Devonian terrane of which the gneisses and schists 
of the Serra do Mar region are the most ancient parts. The railway 
follows along the contact of the limestone with granite as far as 
Mayrink Station, beyond which town the slate belt is followed. 
Beyond Pantoja Station a blue limestone crops out and kilns have 
been built for making lime. Slates and limestones continue along the 
route to Rodovahlo Station, where there is a cement factory. From 
Pyragibu to Sorocaba the road leaves the belt of metamorphosed 
sediments, and passes over granites and gneisses. The disintegration 
of the porphyritic granite, as pointed out by Dr. Derby, produces the | 
granitic surface sands known as swmardo, while weathering of a 
deeper sort changes the granites and gneisses to a clay which from its 
habit of balling under the shoe is called massa pé. 
From Sorocaba onward to Bury the route lay over the Permian 
area of sandstones, shales, and intercalated tillite beds. The line 
passes within sight of the Ypanema stock some three miles in diam- 
eter forming a slight elevation above the general level and mainly 
composed of eruptive rocks in the Pre-Permian terrane. The igneous 
mass is a nepheline syenite with segregations of magnetite famous for 
its early use as an iron ore. Ferreira says the ore was discovered 
in 1578. At Ypanema there are quarries in a grey sandstone of the 
Permian, and old iron furnaces, perhaps the site of the earliest pro- 
duction of iron in America. 
Throughout the day the mainly open unwooded campos of the 
upland, or planalto as the Brazilians term the slightly accidented 
