305 
above. As investigations have been extended to distant regions 
of the earth, more especially to South America, South Africa, 
Australia, New Zealand, and India, other combinations of 
beds have been brought to light, showing the total absence 
of almost two-thirds of the grand series represented on the 
ordinary geological sections of Europe. Again, instead of 
finding beds indicating distinct creations, as assumed at one 
time,, the formations present the appearance of a gradual 
transition of one variety of fossiliferous beds into another as 
the rule, and those indicating apparent distinctions as the 
exception. Daily researches show that no real breaks exist 
between the remains of one formation and another, as was 
once supposed. We now learn that those forms of animal life 
which roamed over parts of the earth before man came to 
encroach and exercise dominion over them, were not destroyed 
before his arrival, but continued to co-exist with him, though 
in other localities, until the time came when they were to 
make way for man and domestic animals more suited to new 
conditions of life and to mam’s requirements. 
Let us commence in the South, and reflect on the general 
character of the sedimentary deposits of Chili, Australia, New 
Zealand, and Tasmania in the south temperate zone. Chili is 
covered with a great thickness of gravel and sand-beds, in 
which are found marine remains of existing species. The 
plains of Patagonia present the same appearance : nothing but 
thick beds of gravel deposited on the edges of the primary 
crystalline rocks, as is seen by a transverse section from Rio 
Santa. Cruz to the base of the Cordillera, and in another on 
the Rio Negro. Beds of recent shells are found as high as 
1,300 leet from the level of the Pacific along this coast; and 
the apparent freshness of the Shells indicates that all these 
deposits are comparatively of very recent date. 
In the south of Australia, Tasmania, and New Zealand, are 
found some carboniferous strata of inferior kind and very 
limited area. These are deposited on the broken edges of the 
primary slate. The general superficial deposits are composed 
oi loose gravel and sand, partially cemented here and there 
by ferr uginous matter. These beds contain the same kind of 
shells as those now seen on the coast, and the bituminous beds 
inclose fern-trees with leaves of the same character as those 
now growing on the banks of the Yarra Yarra river and in Tas- 
mania. In Equatorial America the sedimentary beds are better 
developed, and more numerous than in the south, and they 
can be examined on their escarpment from the plains of Mari- 
quita to the plains of Bogota ; that is, from about 800 feet to 
0,000 feet above the level of the sea. 
