J3L.VKE — PAST LIFE IN SOUTH AMERICA. 



323 



often intercalated layers of slate, quarried for roofing purposes. 

 The thickness of the slabs is from three to six inches. 



[We have given our coiTospondent's communioation the pLice of honour, because if it 

 be worth auythiug at all, it is worthy of the utmost prominence. AVe add, however, a 

 word of caution, for we cannot append our own testimony to Mr. Taylor's opinioti. On 

 receiving the communication, we immediately wrote to Mr. Taylor for the specimens, 

 which he has obligingly sent us, but, unfortunately, we are lu) wiser than before. 'I'lie 

 impressions, or whatever they may be, to our eyes, look more like portions of gigantic 

 Lingula3, or some fibrous shell, than like footprints. If however they occur alternaUdy 

 on each side of a direct line, as stated by Mr. Taylor, that fact is very singular. We 

 would willingly have devoted a plate to them had there been any utility in so doing, but 

 although our artistic powers are tolerably good, as our readers know, we have much doubt 

 whether we could render them either pictorially or sufHciently intelligibly to be of any 

 practical value. Mr. Salter, to whom we sent an outline of one impression, says they 

 are not organic at all, and adds that we cannot possibly say whether the beds be Cam- 

 brian until they have been properly surveyed. We differ from him as to their organic 

 origin. We consider there is little doubt about that; but what they are we are disposed 

 to think it passes the wit of man to say. — Ed. Geol.] 



PAST LIFE IN SOUTH AMEEICA. 

 By Charles Carter Blake, Esq., 



Lecturer on Zoology at the London Listitution. 



The minds of the British public, accustomed to review the com- 

 plex phenomena of geology and paljBontology in the Old, are apt to 

 neglect the equally interesting evidences afforded to them of past 

 life in the New AVorld. American palaeontology is distinguished not 

 because the mighty liemisphere, now the seat of political convul- 

 sions, has not passed through analogous phases of life-stages to those 

 presented by the elder continent, nor because the extinct fauna of 

 America is less interesting than that of Europe, Asia, or Australia, 

 nor that the most eminent men in both worlds have omitted to call 

 attention to the stupendous monuments of bygone existence in the 

 pampas of La Plata or on the sliores of Patagonia, but because the 

 public mind has not yet sufficiently realized the idea that during the 

 period whilst Europe and Asia underwent the manifold and changing 

 influences of geological time, like conditions were passed through in 

 America. 



A tradition exists in the minds of all the earliest aboriginal nations 

 of America, on the banks of the Missouri, at Manta, at Punta St. 

 Elena in Ecuador, at Suacha in New Granada, at Tarija on the 

 eastern slopes of the Andes, and at Tagua-tagua in the south of 

 Chile, that a vast nation of colossal human beings existed before the 

 present inliabitants. Tliese giants, the credulous and imaginative 

 mind of the native supposed, were destroyed by the deities, like the 

 old race of Titans by the Olympian gods, or tiie llrimthursar — the 



