116 BULLETIN: MUSEUM OF COMPARATIVE ZOOLOGY. 
Much has been said as to the origin of the treeless condition of this 
region. About Ponta Grossa in Parana the persistence of the elements 
of the forest along the brooks and rivulets and near the water courses 
would seem to point to the oft repeated supposition of a diminished 
rainfall following the glacial period as the probable cause. In my 
notes on the surface deposits I have presented some reason for thinking 
that traces of such a change in the rainfall and run-off are observable. 
In Parané and Santa Catharina farming and cattle raising find 
suitable conditions and here the influx of European settlers from 
Germany, Poland, and in Rio Grande do Sul from Italy, has under the 
more temperate climate of the upland wrought commensurate changes 
in the appearance of the country. 
Mention has already been made of the harborage to lingering 
remnants of hostile natives which the Triassic trap escarpment affords. 
Farther in the interior larger bodies of aborigines favored by the 
unnavigable rivers made inaccessible from their lower courses by 
reason of the numerous falls over the trap sheets maintain to a large 
degree the primitive state of the Brazilian highland. 
VIII. NOTE ON THE CHANGES OF LEVEL OF THE COAST 
OF SOUTHERN CHILE. 
For more than seventy years Darwin’s raised beaches and terraces 
of the west coast of South America have been generally regarded by 
English-speaking geologists as typical examples of a relative change 
of level of land and sea. Sir Charles Lyell by embodying the observa- 
tions and conclusions of Darwin in his classic Principles of geology 
gave wide distribution to the views of Darwin concerning the magnitude 
and extent of the supposed recent elevation of the west coast of South 
America. <A dissent from the views of the justly celebrated naturalist 
of the “ Beagle” was scarcely heard in geological circles until in 1885, 
when Edouard Suess brought out Das Antlitz der Erde, in which work 
he sought to show by testimony mainly that of observers of the 
Chilean coast since Darwin’s voyage, that no noteworthy elevation of 
this coast in recent times had taken place. Upon the publication of 
the French translation of Suess’s great work, La Face de la Terre, the 
writer (J. B. Woodworth, 1898, p. 803-806) in a review expressed a 
disbelief in the sufficiency of the evidence brought against Darwin’s 
observations and conclusions. In fact, I went to Chile rather for the 
purpose of studying the nature of the movements, whether by frac- 
