326 



THE GEOLOGIST. 



species differing only from the European horse in the greater curva- 

 ture of the molar teeth. These horses no doubt existed iu herds, like 

 the quaggas of South Africa, or like the wild asses of Central Asia. 

 The same influences which promote the numerical increase of horses 

 in South America at the present day, would have tended to promote 

 a similar increase of the equine race in South America during the 

 Pliocene period. The horse was first introduced in a.d. 1537, at 

 Buenos Ayres ; forty-three years afterwards, in a.d. 1580, they were 

 found at the Straits of Magellan. The cause why the horse, once 

 numerous in America, became extinct centuries before the time of 

 Columbus, at present bafiles speculation. More significant is the 

 fact, that we find in the Old World a three-toed fossil horse {Hip- 

 fcirion) which by its annectant afiinities to the earlier odd-toed her- 

 bivores, has been supposed to be absolutely the ancestor of the pre- 

 sent Equus cahallus. In the New "World, however, no such form 

 exists. Whence, then, on a derivative hypothesis, the horses of 

 America ? 



Two tapirs are found, the one in the North, the other in South 

 America; a dubious tapirine form has also been found at St. Louis, 

 in Missouri, associated with fossils " of unquestionable Secondary 

 date!" Pomel has erected this very suspicious type into a new 

 genus, termed by him Menoclus. It is not surprising that we should 

 find tapirine forms in South America, when we reflect that the exist- 

 ing tapir, or d'anta, is found over the whole Brazilian and Argentine 

 Confederation, and from Guatemala to Patagonia. In the Panama 

 and Chiriqui countries, the woolly- tapir of the Andes, or Pinchaque,* 

 also exists, a species far more nearly allied to the extinct races than 

 the other American or than the Sumatrau tapir. In the Andes ot 

 South America, above the line of 6000 feet, the existing tapir is not 

 found. 



When Castelnau was at Tarija, surrounded by fossil remains of 

 mastodons, horses, macrauchenes, scelidotheres, llamas, and other 

 mammalia, he was struck with the state of " fat, contented ignorance" 

 in which the good Franciscan monks had arrived in geological know- 

 ledge. The remains which he saw were all, according to them, proofs 

 of the existence of a gigantic race of men who existed prior to the 

 deluge. Padre Osorio, a Jesuit of Paraguay, had declared, in 1638, 

 that he had seen with his own eyes, in the Gran Chaco, a race of 

 men of the highest physical and mental cultivation so tall that the 

 Jesuit with his upraised arms could scarcely touch their heads. 

 Peradventure, these races belonged to the same stock with those In- 

 dians of California, immortalized by Padre Pray Pedro Simon, who 

 had ears so large that they served for canopies, and under each of 

 them Ave or six men could find ample shelter; or they might be 

 allied to those of a neighbouring province, who, when in need of 

 repose, used to go to sleep beneath the waters of a lake on the banks 

 of which they lived. Even the giants whom Osorio imagined, hovr- 



* I;:\st siiniincr, spocimens of this species, which is hitherto unrepresented in our 

 National Museum, were to be sold iu the streets of Panama for a dime = 6^^. English. 



