MARINE FOSSILS 35 



each other, then throw and entangle the legs of guanaco, 

 horses, cattle, etc. Most of the Indians of today can, 

 and do, throw the bolas to catch their stock, but the prac- 

 tice is declining as it "bangs up their legs." 



Then there were numerous hammer stones of a new 

 type, originally beach-worn pebbles as large as the Indian 

 could conveniently hold in the hand, with one to three 

 pits worked in on either side to give fingers and thumb a 

 firm grip. As a result of their long use, the ends of such 

 stones were much bruised and often chipped. We could 

 find no trace of the hammer head grooved to hold a handle, 

 and none of the many collectors we met had any, so they 

 were presumably not used. Lastly, there were a number 

 of rounded rocks a foot or so in diameter, which we called 

 anvils; each with a pit an inch across in the top, which 

 seemed to have been made to hold objects while they 

 were being broken with the hammers. Throughout the 

 whole trip, scarcely a day passed that we did not pick up 

 some flint implement, or by judicial interest induce the 

 people to give us some which they had found. 



All along the beach there lay worn remnants of great 

 oyster shells often ten inches across and three inches thick. 

 We were told that these were originally washed from the 

 bluffs, and that they occurred in places in the hills four 

 or five miles back of the town. So Sunday morning we 

 took an early start and spent the day among these bluffs, 

 finding that the lower part was composed of white sandy 

 clays which are supposed to be ancient river deposits, but 

 were destitute of fossils. The upper 500 feet, however, 

 were brown sands, in the lower layers of which we found 

 the big oysters, liberally sprinkled, making a very definite 

 oyster bed, some of the individuals here running up to a 

 foot in diameter. Here we also found beds of smaller 

 oysters of at least two species which remind one of modern 

 ones. In the topmost layers there were occasional marine 

 shells and logs of petrified wood, which must have been 



