1833.] SOUTH AMERICAN OSTRICH. 89 
the carcass of an animal embedded in it is perfectly preserved. 
With these facts we must grant, as far as guantity alone of vege 
tation is concerned, that the great quadrupeds of ‘the later ter- 
tiary epochs might, in most parts of Northern Europe and Asia, 
have lived on the spots where their remains are now found. I 
do not here speak of the kind of vegetation necessary for their 
support ; because, as there is evidence of physical changes, and 
as the animals have become extinct, so may we suppose that the 
species of plants have likewise been changed. 
These remarks, I may be permitted to add, directly bear on 
the case of the Siberian animals preserved in ice. The firm con- 
viction of the necessity of a vegetation possessing a character of 
tropical luxuriance, to support such large animals, and the im- 
possibility of reconciling this with the proximity of perpetual 
congelation, was one chief cause of the several theories of sudden 
revolutions of climate, and of overwhelming catastrophes, which 
were invented to account for their entombment. Iam far from 
supposing that the climate has not “changed since the period 
when those animals lived, which now lie buried in the ice. At 
present I only wish to show, that as far as quantity of food alone 
is concerned, the ancient rhinoceroses might have roamed over 
the steppes of central Siberia (the northern parts probably being 
under water) even in their present condition, as well as the 
living rhinoceroses and elephants over the Karros of Southern 
Africa. 
I will now give an account of the habits of some of the more 
interesting birds which are common on the wild plains of North- 
ern Patagonia; and first for the largest, or South American 
ostrich. The ordinary habits of the ostrich are familiar to every 
one. They live on vegetable matter, such as roots and grass ; 
hut at Bahia Blanca I have repeatedly seen three or four come 
down at low water to the extensive mud-banks which are then 
dry, for the sake, as the Gauchos say, of feeding on small fish. 
Although the ostrich in its habits is so shy, wary, and solitary, 
and although so fleet in its pace, it is caught without much dif- 
ficulty by the Indian or Gaucho armed with the bolas. When 
several horsemen appear in a semicircle, it becomes confounded, 
* and does not know which way to escape. They generally prefer 
