United States or Belize ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Those which I examined near the A. S. Juan were much worn: they consisted of Mactra Isabellei, d'Orbigny, mingled with few of Venus sinuosa, Lam., both inhabiting, as I am informed by M. d'Orbigny, brackish water at the mouth of the Plata, nearly or quite as salt as the open sea.
On the northern bank of the great estuary of the Rio Plata, near Maldonado, I found at the head of a lake, sometimes brackish but generally containing fresh water, a bed of muddy clay, six feet in thickness, with numerous shells of species still existing in the Plata, namely, the Azara labiata, d'Orbigny, fragments of Mytilus eduliformis, d'Orbigny, Paludestrina Isabellei, d'Orbigny, and the Solen Caribaeus, Lam., which last was embedded vertically in the position in which it had lived.
I heard, also, of beds of shells on the Somborombon, and on the Rio Salado, at which latter place, as M. d'Orbigny informs me, the Mactra Isabellei and Venus sinuosa are found. Mr. Res." page 35 and Dr.
Sir W. Parish has given me some of these shells, and M. d'Orbigny pronounces them to be: Buccinanops globulosum, d'Orbigny. Olivancillaria auricularia, d'Orbigny. Venus flexuosa, Lam. Mactra Isabellei, d'Orbigny. Ostrea pulchella, d'Orbigny. Voluta colocynthis. Voluta angulata. These shell-beds extend from one league to six leagues from the Plata, and must lie many feet above its level.
Word Of The Day