354 



THE GEOLOGIST. 



remarkable that the holes for the handles are very small, as if the 

 handles had been pliable like the hazel- stick handles they use in some 

 districts for stone hammers to crack flints for road mending. 



It has occurred to me that the smooth faces of the surfaces in Dr. 

 Brees' specimen may have been cut after having been chopped off, 

 and that they do not necessarily imply the use of a saw. They were 

 not rubbed down. The marks of cutting are plain, and they are a 

 little hollowed out in the direction of the edge of the instrument 

 with which the cuts were made, as you would almost inevitably 

 hollow the end of a stick if you attempted to cut it flat with a common 

 knife. 



I must not omit to mention the kindness with which the curator 

 of the Antiquities department of the Museum supplied the information 

 I required respecting the specimens there. 



CORRESPONDENCE. 



ON THE DISCOVERY OF MACRAUCHENIA IN BOLIVIA. 



Sir, — As you inserted a report of the lecture by Professor Huxley, on which 

 the following remarks are founded, perhaps you will not object to give place to 

 them also ; they appeared in the last number of the " Annals of Natural 

 History." 



In the February number of the " Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society," 

 a report of a paper appeared, read by Prof. Huxley on November 21, 1860, 

 respecting " a new species of Macrauchenia (M. ooliviensis), obtained by Mr. 

 Forbes from the mines of Corocoro, in Bolivia." In this paper the following note 

 is inserted : — 



" As the Guanaco ranges into the highlands, it may not be a too sanguine 

 expectation to hope for the future discovery of remains of the great Macrauchenia 

 also in Bolivia" (p. 83). 



As this statement, unaccompanied by any reference to the corroborative testi- 

 mony of other palaeontologists, is calculated to leave the reader under the im- 

 pression that remains of Macrauchenia patachonica are yet undiscovered in 

 Bolivia, I must respectfully indicate to those readers of your valuable periodical 

 who are unacquainted with the fact, that Mr. Weddell, writing in Castelnau's 

 •'Expedition dans les Parties centrales de l'Amerique du Sud," 4to, Paris, 1855, 

 states, on page 36th of the 7th Partie (Zoologie), and on page 203 of the 6th 

 volume of the " Histoire du Voyage," 8vo, Paris, 1851, that bones of Macrau- 

 chenia were found at Tarija, in South Bolivia, imbedded in the soil with Mastodon 

 EvmboldUi, Scelidoiherium, Megatherium, three species of time Auchenia, Equus 

 macrqgnatlms vel neogwus, Ursus, &c. He does not specially distinguish them 

 from M. iKitachonica, and figures them under that name on plate 8 of the 7th 

 part. If the remains described by Prof. Huxley should prove to be of a distinct 

 species, the fact would be not merely that " a small and a large species of Auche- 

 noid mammal ranged the mountains and the plains of South America respec- 

 tively/' but that two nearly similar species of Macrauchenia co-existed in the 

 highlands of Bolivia during the Post-pleistocene epoch. As Tarija, on the eastern 



