Lyell's paper in the "Geological Proceedings" volume 4 page 3 and in his "Travels in North America" volume 1 page 164 and volume 2 page 60.For the European analogous cases see Mr.Lyell's "Principles of Geology" 6th edition volume 1 page 37.) The enumeration of these extinct North American animals naturally leads me to refer to the former closer relation of the mammiferous inhabitants of the two Americas, which I have discussed in my "Journal," and likewise to the vast extent of country over which some of them ranged: thus the same species of the Megatherium, Megalonyx, Equus (as far as the state of their remains permits of identification), extended from the Southern United States of North America to Bahia Blanca, in latitude 39degrees S., on the coast of Patagonia.The fact of these animals having inhabited tropical and temperate regions, does not appear to me any great difficulty, seeing that at the Cape of Good Hope several quadrupeds, such as the elephant and hippopotamus, range from the equator to latitude 35degrees south.The case of the Mastodon Andium is one of more difficulty, for it is found from latitude 36 degrees S., over, as I have reason to believe, nearly the whole of Brazil, and up the Cordillera to regions which, according to M.d'Orbigny, border on perpetual snow, and which are almost destitute of vegetation: undoubtedly the climate of the Cordillera must have been different when the mastodon inhabited it; but we should not forget the case of the Siberian mammoth and rhinoceros, as showing how severe a climate the larger pachydermata can endure; nor overlook the fact of the guanaco ranging at the present day over the hot low deserts of Peru, the lofty pinnacles of the Cordillera, and the damp forest-clad land of Southern Tierra del Fuego; the puma, also, is found from the equator to the Strait of Magellan, and I have seen its footsteps only a little below the limits of perpetual snow in the Cordillera of Chile.
At the period, so recent in a geological sense, when these extinct mammifers existed, the two Americas must have swarmed with quadrupeds, many of them of gigantic size; for, besides those more particularly referred to in this chapter, we must include in this same period those wonderfully numerous remains, some few of them specifically, and others generically related to those of the Pampas, discovered by MM.Lund and Clausen in the caves of Brazil.Finally, the facts here given show how cautious we ought to be in judging of the antiquity of a formation from even a great amount of difference between the extinct and living species in any one class of animals;--we ought even to be cautious in accepting the general proposition, that change in organic forms and lapse of time are at all, necessarily, correlatives.
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LOCALITIES WITHIN THE REGION OF THE PAMPAS WHERE GREAT BONES HAVE BEENFOUND.
The following list, which includes every account which I have hitherto met with of the discovery of fossil mammiferous remains in the Pampas, may be hereafter useful to a geologist investigating this region, and it tends to show their extraordinary abundance.I heard of and saw many fossils, the original position of which I could not ascertain; and I received many statements too vague to be here inserted.Beginning to the south:--we have the two stations in Bahia Blanca, described in this chapter, where at P.
