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Show GEOLOGICAL INTRODUCTION. BY MR. DARWIN. MR. OwEN having undertaken the description of the fossil remains of the Mammalia, which were collected during the voyage of the Beagle, and which are now deposited in the Museum of the College of Surgeons in London, it remains for me briefly to state the circumstances under which they were discovered. As it would require a lengthened discussion to enter fully on the geological history of the deposits in which these remains have been preserved, and as this will be the subject of a separate work, I shall here only give sufficient details, for the reader to form some general idea of the epoch, at which these animals lived,- of their relative antiquity one to the other,-and of the circumstances under which their skeletons were embedded. All the remains were found between latitudes 31° and .soo on the eastern side of South America. The localities may conveniently be classed under three divisions, namely-the Provinces bordering the Plata; Bahia Blanca situated near the confines of Northern Patagonia; and Southern Patagonia. The first division includes an enormous area, abounding with the remains of large animals. To the eastward and southward of the great streams, which unite to form the estuary of the Plata, those almost boundless plains extend, which are known by the name of the Pampas. Their physical constitution does not vary over a wide extent; - the traveller may pass for many hundred miles on a level surface, without meeting with a single pebble, or discovering any change in Bv 2 |
