The Patagonians-Guanaco Hunting-Singular Burial Customs-A Horse with a Proboscis-Extinction-Up the Santa Cruz-Puma Tracks-Catching the Condor-Falkland Islands-Among the Glaciers-The Fuegians-Giant Sea-Weed and Its Work.

ATAGONIA was looked forward to by Darwin with no little pleasure, and on December 22d the Beagle cast anchor in the harbor of Port Desire, near the ruin of an old Spanish settlement. The animal life here was somewhat limited, as was the flora, the most characteristic animal being the curious

little wild llama or guanaco, which was found in large herds on the plains. They were shy, but Darwin took advantage of their curiosity by making various motions and assuming strange postures, and succeeded in shooting a number. When discovered several miles off they immediately took fright and ran, while one,

The Fossils of Patagonia.

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surprised near at hand, moved away slowly. Another which Darwin met with on the mountains squealed, snorted, and pranced about when he approached, defying him, as it were.

The guanaco is altogether a curious creature, and our naturalist found that they actually had certain places in which to die. In one spot he counted the remains of at least twenty of these animals in a restricted area. Referring to this in his note-book he says: "I do not at all understand the reason of this, but I may observe that the wounded guanacos at the Santa Cruz invariably walked towards the river. At St. Jago, in the Cape Verd Islands, I remember having seen in a ravine a retired corner covered with bones of the goat; we at the time exclaimed that it was the burial-ground of all the goats in the island. I mention these trifling circumstances because in certain cases they might explain the occurrence of a number of uninjured bones in a cave, or buried under alluvial accumulations; and likewise the cause why certain animals are more commonly embedded than others in sedimentary deposits."

Among the interesting fossils found in Patagonia was the skeleton of the macrauchenia-an animal equalling a camel in size, having a long neck and, according to Bermeister, a South American geologist, a short trunk like that of an elephant. These singular discoveries were of great import to Darwin. We find him reflecting upon the causes which produced their extinction, and it is interesting to note how correct were his deductions. He was impressed

with the evidences of change that were apparent on every hand. The remains which he found showed that in the past the country was peopled with a race of giants which had given way to pigmies. The land which once trembled under the tread of the huge sloth, and saw the monster armadillo, was now roamed by the little guanaco. Darwin proved that the huge forms were contemporaneous with the shells which then flourished in the ocean, consequently were of comparatively recent date. What, then, was the cause of their extinction? Darwin's first thought, and a most natural one, was that some great cataclysm had taken place which destroyed entire races in Patagonia and Brazil. He argued from the results of his investigations that all the physical features were the result of gradual changes, consequently it could not have been a change of temperature at once sudden and death-dealing. Many of the animals which passed away so mysteriously existed after the ice age, which has been supposed to have been the exterminator. What, then, could have been the cause of such widespread destruction? That early man might have been the destroyer evidently passed through the mind of the young naturalist, as he says: "Did man, after his first inroad into South America, destroy, as has been suggested, the unwieldy Megatherium and the other Edentata?"

Yet he believed the extinction of the smaller forms, as the little tucutuco, could not have been effected in this way. He considered an extreme drought and reflected upon its possibilities, also