38 Idle Days in Patagonia. 



picked up are at present, I believe, in the famous 

 Pitt-Rivers collection. But I was over careful. 

 The finest of my treasures, the most curious and 

 beautiful objects I could select, packed apart for 

 greater safety, were unfortunately lost in transit — a 

 severe blow, which hurt me more than the wouud 

 I had received on the knee. 



At some of the villages I examined, within a few 

 yards of the ground where the huts had stood, I 

 found deposits of bones of animals that had been 

 used as food. These were of the rhea, huanaco, 

 deer, peccary, dolichotis or Patagonian hare, arma- 

 dillo, coypii, vizcacha, with others of smaller mam- 

 mals and birds. Most numerous among them were 

 the bones of the small cavy (Cavia australis), a 

 form of the guinea-pig; and of the tuco-tuco 

 (Ctenom^ys magellanica), a small rodent with the 

 habits of the mole. 



A most interesting fact was that the arrow- 

 heads I picked up in different villages were of 

 two widely different kinds — the large and rudely 

 fashioned, resembling the Palaeolithic arrow-heads 

 of Europe, and the highl^'-finished, or Neolithic, 

 arrow-heads of various forms and sizes, but in 

 most specimens an inch and a half to two inches 

 long. Here there were the remains of the two 

 great periods of the Stone Age, the last of which 

 continued down till the discovery and colonization 

 of the country by Europeans. The weapons and 

 other objects of the latter period were the most 

 abundant, and occurred in the valley : the ruder 



