252 EOCENE PERIOD. [Ch. XVIII. 



which frequently float on the surface of rivers together with 

 wood. 



M. Prevost has, therefore, suggested that a river may have 

 swept away the bodies of animals, and the plants which lived 

 on its borders, or in the lakes which it traversed, and may have 

 carried them down into the centre of the gulf into which flowed 

 the waters impregnated with sulphate of lime. We know that 

 the Fiume Salso in Sicily enters the sea so charged with various 

 salts that the thirsty cattle refuse to drink of it. A stream of 

 sulphureous water, as white as milk, descends into the sea from 

 the volcanic mountain of Idienne, on the east of Java ; and a 

 great body of hot water, charged with sulphuric acid, rushed 

 down from the same on one occasion, and inundated a large 

 tract of country, destroying, by its noxious properties, all the 

 vegetation*. In like manner the Pusanibio, or ' Vinegar 

 river ' of Colombia, which rises at the foot of Purace, an ex- 

 tinct volcano 7500 feet above the level of the sea, is strongly 

 impregnated with sulphuric and muriatic acid, and with oxide 

 of iron. We may easily suppose the waters of such streams to 

 have properties noxious to marine animals, and in this manner 

 we may explain the entire absence of marine remains in the 

 ossifferous gypsum -f-. 



There are no pebbles or coarse sand in the gypsum, a cir- 

 cumstance which agrees well with the hypothesis that these 

 beds were precipitated from water holding sulphate of lime in 

 solution, and floating the remains of different animals. The 

 bones of land quadrupeds however are not confined entirely to 

 the fresh-water formation to which the gypsum belongs, for 

 the remains of a Palseotherium, together with some fresh-water 

 shells have been found in a marine stratum belonging to the 

 calcaire grossier at Beauchamp. 



In the gypsum the remains of about fifty species of qua- 

 drupeds have been found all extinct and nearly four-fifths 



* Leyde Magaz. voor Wetensch Konst en Lett., partie v. cahier i.p, 71. Cited 

 by Rozet, Journ. de Geologic, torn. i. p. 43. 



f M. C. Prevost, Submersions Iteratives, &c. Note 23. 



