EL.VKE — PAST LIFE IN SOUTH AMERICA. 
823 
often intercalated layers of slate, quarried for roofing purposes. 
The thickness of the slabs is from three to six inches. 
[We have given our correspondent's communication the place of honour, because if it 
be vi-orth anything at all, it is worthy of the utmost prominence. "NYe add, however, a 
word of caution, for we cannot append our own testimony to Mr. Taylor's opinion. On 
receiving the communication, we immediately wrote to Mr. Taylor for the specimens, 
which he has obligingly sent us, but, unfortunately, we are no wiser than before. The 
impressions, or whatever they may be, to our eyes, look more like portious of gigantic 
Lingulse, or some fibrous shell, than like footprints. If however they occur alternately 
on each side of a direct line, as stated by Mr. Taylor, that fact is very singular. Y^e 
would willingly have devoted a plate to them had there been any utility in so doing, but 
although om" artistic powers are tolerably good, as om* readers know, we have much doubt 
whether we could render them either pictorially or sufficiently intelligibly to be of any 
practical value. Mr. Salter, to whom we sent an outliae 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 thiuk it passes the wit of man to say. — Ed. Geol.] 
PAST LIFE IN SOUTH AMEEICA. 
By Chaeles Caeteb 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 palaeontology in the Old, are apt to 
neglect the equally interesting evidences afforded to them of past 
life in the iS'ew World. American palteontology is distinguished not 
because the mighty hemisphere, now the seat of political convul- 
sions, has not passed through analogous phases of life-stages to those 
presented by the elder continent, nor be:*ause 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 shores of Patagonia, but because the 
public mind has not yet sufficiently realized the idea that during tlie 
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 jMissouri, 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 inhabitants. These 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 the Hrimthursar— the 
