414 On the Absence of part n. 



with, the views of Mr. Lyell, that the causes which gave 

 to the older tertiary productions of the quite temperate 

 zones of Europe a tropical character, ivere of a local 

 character and; did not affect the entire globe. On the 

 other hand, I have endeavoured to show, in the ' Geo- 

 logical Transactions,' that, at a much later period, Europe 

 and North and South America were nearly contempora- 

 neously subjected to ice-action, and consequently to a 

 colder, or at least, more equable climate than that now 

 characteristic of the same latitudes. 



On the Absence of extensive modem Conchiferous 

 Deposits in South America; and on the Contempo- 

 raneousness of the older Tertiary Deposits at distant 

 points being due to contemporaneous movements of 

 subsidence. — Knowing from the researches of Professor 

 E. Forbes, that molluscous animals chieflv abound 

 within a depth of 100 fathoms and under, and bearing 

 in mind how many thousand miles of both coasts of 

 South America have been upraised within the recent 

 period by a slow, long-continued, intermittent move- 

 ment, — seeing the diversity in nature of the shores and 

 the number of shells now living on them, — seeing also 

 that the sea off Patagonia and off many parts of Chile, 

 was during the tertiary period highly favourable to the 

 accumulation of sediment, — the absence of extensive 

 deposits including recent shells over these vast spaces 

 of coast is highly remarkable. The conchiferous cal- 

 careous beds at Coquimbo, and at a few isolated points 

 northward, offer the most marked exception to this 

 statement; for these beds are from twenty to thirty 

 feet in thickness, and they stretch for some miles along 

 shore, attaining, however, only a very trifling breadth. 

 At Yaldivia there is some sandstone with imperfect casts 

 of shells, which possibly may belong to the recent period : 

 parts of the boulder formation and the shingle-beds on 



