328 



THE GEOLOGIST. 



rodents and insectivores. The portions of the skeleton found fossil 

 are exactly those parts which the owl cannot digest, and which she 

 casts out of her mouth as innutritive or indigestible. A coypu of 

 superior size to the existing species is found in the Pliocene strata 

 of Brazil. Many species of small pacas, agiitis, and capybaras then 

 existed allied to those which now infest the banks of the tributaries 

 of the Amazon and Essequibo. 



Blood-sucking bats then, as now, found a source of aliment in the 

 warm-blooded mammalia. Cats, the size of the jaguar, subsisted on the 

 numerous herbivorous animals. One of them deserves especial men- 

 tion. The existing cheetah {Cynailurus jiibatus) is confined to the 

 Old World, where alone this "hunting-leopard," with non-retractile 

 claws, preys upon the antelopes and deer. It is a surprising fact 

 that a very small species of this hunting-leopard {^Cynailurus minutus) 

 existed during the Pliocene period in Brazil, with the gigantic Macliai- 

 rodiis, or sabre-toothed tiger, and the Buenos Ayres bear. This Ma- 

 chairodus, the most carnassial of all the predatory animals known to 

 zoologists, existed in the cave breccias of Devonshire, in the Sewalik 

 (tertiary) strata of India, in the mountains of Auvergne and Darm- 

 stadt, and in the Patagonian and Brazilian bone caves. 



In Chile the progress of geology is small. The erudite and pains- 

 taking M. Claudio Gay, who was appointed by the Chileno Govern- 

 ment to report on the physical productions of their republic, actually, 

 when describing the Plesiosaurian bones from Concepcion,* spoke of 

 them as being contemporaneous with the Mastodons of Taguatagua, 

 and like them, destroyed by the diluvial catastrophe. These Plesio- 

 sauri existed at Concepcion during the Jurassic period, and their re- 

 mains singularly resemble those of some of the same genus from the 

 chalk in England. The same observations may apply to the Ammo- 

 nites, of which characteristic species are found in the " Oxfordian " 

 and " Liassic " strata of Peru and Chile. 



Thus far we have recounted some of the leading features of South 

 American Palaeontology. The exigencies of space, however, necessitate 

 a brief glance only at the remains of the hosts oiToxodontia and smooth- 

 brained Briita which peopled the forests of Paraguay, the Pampas, and 

 Patagonia. The labours of Mr. Charles Darwin, one of the few philo- 

 sophical travellers who have ever visited South America, have made the 

 forms of the Megatherium, the Mylodon, and the Glyptodon familiar 

 to us ; and the idea of South American Palaeontology naturally re- 

 calls to the mind of the reader the bulky forms of these huge beasts. 

 The armadillos and sloths of Brazil now form the puny representa- 

 tives of these bygone creations. The Mylodon, which, poised on its 

 hinder limbs, and supported by its powerful tail, tripod-like, with 

 long-continued rapid and energetic vibrations, tore down the most 

 gigantic trees ; the Glyptodon, whose circular mailed cuirass suggested 

 the idea to its first discoverers, that they had found a buried hogs- 

 head in the sand ; the Toxodon, with its strange interblending of 

 characters, allied to the rhinoceros and the manatee, yet resembling 

 * Geologist, vol. V. p. 110. 



