252 
EOCENE PERIOD. 
[Ch. XVIII. 
which frequently float on the surface of rivers together with 
wood. 
M. Prevost has, therefore, suggested that a river may have 
swept away the bodies of animals, and the plants which lived 
on its borders, or in the lakes which it traversed, and may have 
carried them down into the centre of the gulf into which flowed 
the waters impregnated with sulphate of lime. We know that 
theFiume Salso in Sicily enters the sea so charged with various 
salts that the thirsty cattle refuse to drink of it. A stream of 
sulphureous water, as white as milk, descends into the sea from 
the volcanic mountain of Idienne, on the east of Java ; and a 
great body of hot water, charged with sulphuric acid, rushed 
down from the same on one occasion, and inundated a large 
tract of country, destroying, by its noxious properties, all the 
vegetation *.. In like manner the Pusanibio, or ' Vinegar 
river' of Colombia, which rises at the foot of Purace, an ex- 
tinct volcano 7500 feet above the level of the sea, is strongly 
impregnated with sulphuric and muriatic acid, and with oxide 
of iron. We may easily suppose the waters of such streams to 
have properties noxious to marine animals, and in this manner 
we may explain the entire absence of marine remains in the 
ossifferous gypsum -J*. 
There are no pebbles or coarse sand in the gypsum, a cir- 
cumstance which agrees well with the hypothesis that these 
beds were precipitated from water holding sulphate of lime in 
solution, and floating the remains of different animals. The. 
bones of land quadrupeds however are not confined entirely to 
the fresh-water formation to which the gypsum belongs, for 
the remains of a Paleeotherium, together with some fresh-water 
shells have been found in a marine stratum belonging to the 
calcaire grassier at Beauchamp. 
In the gypsum the remains of about fifty species of qua- 
drupeds have been found all extinct and nearly four-fifths 
* Leyde Magaz. voor Wetensch Konst eu Lett., partie v. caliier i.p. 71. Cited 
by Rozet, Journ. de Geologie, torn. i. \i. 43. 
f M. C. Prevost, Submersions Iteratives, &c. Note 23. 
