V 
FOOD OF LARGE QUADRUPEDS 
89 
the elevation of the land has been small (without there has 
been an intercalated period of subsidence, of which we have no 
evidence) since the great quadrupeds wandered over the sur¬ 
rounding plains ; and the external features of the country must 
then have been very nearly the same as now. What, it may 
naturally be asked, was the character of the vegetation at that 
period ; was the country as wretchedly sterile as it now is ? 
As so many of the co-embedded shells are the same with those 
now living in the bay, I was at first inclined to think that the 
former vegetation was probably similar to the existing one ; but 
this would have been an erroneous inference, for some of these 
same shells live on the luxuriant coast of Brazil ; and generally, 
the characters of the inhabitants of the sea are useless as guides 
to judge of those on the land. Nevertheless, from the following 
considerations, I do not believe that the simple fact of many 
gigantic quadrupeds having lived on the plains round Bahia 
Blanca, is any sure guide that they formerly were clothed with 
a luxuriant vegetation : I have no doubt that the sterile country 
a little southward, near the Rio Negro, with its scattered thorny 
trees, would support many and large quadrupeds. 
That large animals require a luxuriant vegetation, has been 
a general assumption which has passed from one work to 
another ; but I do not hesitate to say that it is completely false, 
and that it has vitiated the reasoning of geologists on some 
points of great interest in the ancient history of the world. 
The prejudice has probably been derived from India, and the 
Indian islands, where troops of elephants, noble forests, and im¬ 
penetrable jungles, are associated together in every one’s mind. 
If, however, we refer to any work of travels through the southern 
parts of Africa, we shall find allusions in almost every page 
either to the desert character of the country, or to the 
numbers of large animals inhabiting it. The same thing is 
rendered evident by the many engravings which have been 
published of various parts of the interior. When the Beagle 
was at Cape Town, I made an excursion of some days’ length 
into the country, which at least was sufficient to render that 
which I had read more fully intelligible. 
Dr. Andrew Smith, who, at the head of his adventurous 
party, has lately succeeded in passing the Tropic of Capricorn, 
