772 THE JOURNAL OF GEOLOGY. 



I may sum up my own views with the statement that I did 

 not see, during eight years of travel and geological observations 

 that extended from the Amazon valley and the coast through 

 the highlands of Brazil and to the head waters of the Paraguay 

 and the Tapajos, a single phenomenon in the way of boulders, 

 gravels, clays, soils, surfaces or topography, that could be 

 attributed to glaciation. A glacial origin for certain gravels has 

 probably been suggested by Derby, 1 because their origin is 

 somewhat obscure, but I am of the opinion that they admit of 

 the same explanation as the high river gravels of the south- 

 western United States, and that glaciation had nothing whatever 



to do with them. 2 



John C. Branner. 



London, 1886, 424. Three Thousand Miles through Brazil, by J. W. Wells, London, 



1886, II, 373-4. Sparks from a Geologist's Hammer, by Alexander Winchell, 

 Chicago, 1887, 180. Notes of a Naturalist in South America, by John Bell, London, 



1887, 313-318 and 342. Darwinism, by Alfred R. Wallace, London, 1889, 370. 



'Wappeus' Geographia Physica do Brazil, p. 55. 



2 It may have some value as corroborating an opinion formed before studying the 

 geology of the Southern United States, that all the phenomena brought forward in sup- 

 port of the glaciation of Brazil are repeated in the Southern States, far south of what 

 geologists readily recognize as the utmost limits of glacial ice. In Arkansas for exam- 

 ple, boulders occur near Little Rock, of such shape, character, and distribution as to 

 strongly suggest a glacial boulder train, if the glaciation of the region were admissible, 

 or another explanation were not evidently the correct one. For an illustration of such 

 boulders see Annual Rep. Geol. Survey of Arkansas for 1890, II., 25. 



