Chapter 4

ON THE FORMATIONS OF THE PAMPAS.

Mineralogical constitution.
Microscopical structure.
Buenos Ayres, shells embedded in tosca-rock.
Buenos Ayres to the Colorado.
San Ventana.
Bahia Blanca; M. Hermoso, bones and infusoria of; P. Alta, shells, bones, and infusoria of; co-existence of the recent shells and extinct mammifers.
Buenos Ayres to Santa Fe.
Skeletons of Mastodon.
Infusoria.
Inferior marine tertiary strata, their age.
Horse's tooth.
BANDA ORIENTAL.
Superficial Pampean formation.
Inferior tertiary strata, variation of, connected with volcanic action; Macrauchenia Patachonica at San Julian in Patagonia, age of, subsequent to living mollusca and to the erratic block period.
SUMMARY.
Area of Pampean formation.
Theories of origin.
Source of sediment.
Estuary origin.
Contemporaneous with existing mollusca.
Relations to underlying tertiary strata.
Ancient deposit of estuary origin.
Elevation and successive deposition of the Pampean formation.
Number and state of the remains of mammifers; their habitation, food, extinction, and range.
Conclusion.
Localities in Pampas at which mammiferous remains have been found.

The Pampean formation is highly interesting from its vast extent, its disputed origin, and from the number of extinct gigantic mammifers embedded in it. It has upon the whole a very uniform character: consisting of a more or less dull reddish, slightly indurated, argillaceous earth or mud, often, but not always, including in horizontal lines concretions of marl, and frequently passing into a compact marly rock. The mud, wherever I examined it, even close to the concretions, did not contain any carbonate of lime. The concretions are generally nodular, sometimes rough externally, sometimes stalactiformed; they are of a compact structure, but often penetrated (as well as the mud) by hair-like serpentine cavities, and occasionally with irregular fissures in their centres, lined with minute crystals of carbonate of lime; they are of white, brown, or pale pinkish tints, often marked by black dendritic manganese or iron; they are either darker or lighter tinted than the surrounding mass; they contain much carbonate of lime, but exhale a strong aluminous odour, and leave, when dissolved in acids, a large but varying residue, of which the greater part consists of sand. These concretions often unite into irregular strata; and over very large tracts of country, the entire mass consists of a hard, but generally cavernous marly rock: some of the varieties might be called calcareous tuffs.

Dr. Carpenter has kindly examined under the microscope, sliced and polished specimens of these concretions, and of the solid marl-rock, collected in various places between the Colorado and Santa Fe Bajada. In the greater number, Dr. Carpenter finds that the whole substance presents a