360 E. M. KINDLE 



Charles Darwin described a very curious habit of the guanaco 

 or llama of South America which if shared by many of the extinct 

 vertebrates may help to explain some of the bone beds of the 

 Cretaceous and other rocks. 



The guanacos appear to have favorite spots for lying down to die. On 

 the banks of the St. Cruz in certain circumscribed spaces, which were generally 

 bushy and all near the river, the ground was actually white with bones. On 

 one such spot I counted between ten and twenty heads. I particularly 

 examined the bones; they did not appear as some scattered ones which I 

 had seen gnawed or broken as if dragged together by beasts of prey. The 

 animals in most cases must have crawled, before dying, beneath and amongst 

 the bushes. Mr. Bynoe informs me that during a former voyage he observed 

 the same circumstance on the banks of the Rio GaUegos. I do not at all 

 understand the reason for this but I may observe that the wounded guanacos 

 at the St. Cruz invariably walked towards the river. At St. Jago in the Cape 

 de Verd Island, I remember having seen in a ravine a retired corner covered 

 with bones of the goat ; we at the time exclaimed that it was the burial ground 

 of all the goats in the island.^ 



The periodic migration habit which characterizes many species 

 of vertebrate animals tends strongly toward a highly irregular 

 and localized distribution of their fossil remains. The migrating 

 instinct which is remarkably developed in the majority of the birds 

 of the temperate zone, in many species of fishes and in some of the 

 mammals results in the great bulk of the species concerned dying in 

 either its summer or winter habitat or in some especially hazardous 

 portion of its semiannual journey. This habit is typically 

 developed in the caribou of northwest Canada. The summer 

 range and breeding ground of this deer lies several hundred miles 

 to the north of its winter habitat. The number of individuals 

 which move south, each autumn from the Arctic barrens to the 

 forested lake region of north central Canada numbers hundreds of 

 thousands if not millions of individuals.^ The bulk of the herds 

 follow certain well-defined routes and generally cross certain east to 

 west trending lakes at certain points. If we consider the thousands 

 of years that this movement has been going on and the frequent 

 casualties which have probably occurred in crossing on the new 



' Charles Darwin, The Voyage of the Beagle, p. 172. 



2 E. M. Kindle, "A Note on the Migration of the Barren Ground Caribou," 

 Ottawa Naturalist, XXXI (191 7), 107-9. 



