32 BULLETIN: MUSEUM OF COMPARATIVE ZOOLOGY. 
the Andesian uplift, the dissection of the surface is more complete, 
and the descent to the bed of the Pacific Ocean is steep. 
December 8th.— The Oravia put into Coronel for a.supply of coal. 
The mines at and near Coronel are the most important on the coast of 
South America. The principal outcrop of coal is inland, some distance 
from the shore but the workings follow the coal beneath the sea. 
The beds in which the coal occurs are regarded as of Eocene age. 
(Sundt, 1908, p. 37-44). The coal is bituminous and is described as 
bright and clean but light. The Arauco Company has produced 
from its mines as much as 200,000 tons per annum. The coal is ex- 
tensively used by steamers plying the west coast and in the locomo- 
tives of the Chilean railway (Alcock, 1907, p. 85). 
Captain Oakley of the Pacific Steam Navigation Co. expressed the 
opinion that the coast at Coronel has risen in recent years. An old 
wreck partly buried in the beach skirting the south side of the point 
on the north of the anchorage, according to his observation now lies 
higher than when he first saw it. I note the opinion as a matter for 
further investigation. 
While the steamer was taking in coal I went in a sailboat to Lota, 
a small port. about four miles south of Coronel, where coal is also 
mined. A conglomeratic sandstone here crops out, the scattered 
pebbles and massive bedding of which strongly suggests the trans- 
portation of the pebbles by ice. In my hasty examination of the rock 
I was unable to find striated pebbles. It should be noted in this 
connection that Darwin (1846, p. 69) described “great boulders of 
granite and other neighbouring rocks, embedded in fine sedimentary 
layers” in Tertiary deposits along the coast of Peru. Back of 
Coronel! there are at least three terraces in the bed rock but whether 
due to differential weathering or marine erosion at different levels I 
was unable to determine. Along this coast towards the Tumbres 
Peninsula there is an uplifted baselevelled surface forming a narrow 
bench cut back and cliffed by the sea at the present level, with sub- 
dued remnants of higher rock masses rising above the terrace as in the 
case of the Paps of Bio Bio. This bench must be early Pleistocene or 
late Tertiary in date. Narrow steep ravines crease the cliff face; 
but practically no stream-cut channels cross it with their mouths at 
sea-level. All the small vales which traverse the bench are hung up 
at the seaward edge by reason of the cutting back of the terrace by 
the sea. This bench is probably to be correlated with a well-defined 
bench of erosion at Corral on the south but is much higher above the 
sea. 
