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On the wide uninhabited plains of Patagonia another closely allied species, O. Patagonica of d'Orbigny, which frequents the valleys clothed with spiny bushes, is a wilder bird, and has a slightly different tone of voice.
You may touch going thither on either side of Terra Patagonica, or, if you please, at the Gallapagoes Islands, where there is Refreshment enough; and returning you may probably touch somewhere on New Holland, and so make some profitable discovery in these Places without going out of your way.
The finest is the so-called Patagonian hare Dolichotis patagonica a beautiful animal twice as large as a hare, with ears shorter and more rounded, and legs relatively much longer. The fur is grey and chestnut brown. It is diurnal in its habits, lives in kennels, and is usually met with in pairs, or small flocks.
Only the Turritella Chilensis from Huafo and Mocha, the T. Patagonica and Venus meridionalis from Navidad, come very near to recent South American shells, namely, the two Turritellas to T. cingulata, and the Venus to V. exalbida: some few other species come rather less near; and some few resemble forms in the older European tertiary deposits: none of the species resemble secondary forms.
Many gigantic specimens of the Ostraea Patagonica were collected in the Gulf of St. George. A good section of the lowest fossiliferous mass, about forty feet in thickness, resting on claystone porphyry, is exhibited a few miles south of the harbour. The shells sufficiently perfect to be recognised consist of: Pecten Paranensis, d'Orbigny, "Voyage, Pal." Nucula ornata, G.B. Sowerby. 6.
The great oyster is here numerous in layers; the Trigonocelia and Turritella are also very numerous: it is remarkable that the Pecten Paranensis, so common in all other parts of the coast, is here absent: the shells consist of: Ostrea Patagonica, d'Orbigny; "Voyage Pal." Venus meridionalis of G.B. Sowerby. 4. Crassatella Lyellii, G.B. Sowerby. 5. Cardium puelchum, G.B. Sowerby. 6.
With the exception of a few of the Ostrea Patagonica, which appeared to have rolled down from the cliff above, no organic remains were found.
Ostrea Patagonica, d'Orbigny, "Voyage, Pal." Ostrea Alvarezii, d'Orbigny, "Voyage, Pal." Pecten Paranensis, d'Orbigny, "Voyage, Pal." Pecten Darwinianus, d'Orbigny, "Voyage, Pal." Pecten actinodes, G.B. Sowerby. 6. Casts of a Turritella. The four first of these species occur at St. Fe in Entre Rios, and the two first in the sandstone of the Rio Negro.
My examination here was very short: the cliffs are about a hundred feet high; the lower third consists of yellowish-brown, soft, slightly calcareous, muddy sandstone, parts of which when struck emit a fetid smell. In this bed the great Ostraea Patagonica, often marked with dendritic manganese and small coral-lines, were extraordinarily numerous. I found here the following shells:
Turritella Patagonica, G.B. Sowerby. The fossiliferous strata, when not denuded, are conformably covered by a considerable thickness of the fine-grained pumiceous mudstone, divided into two masses: the lower half is very fine-grained, slightly unctuous, and so compact as to break with a semi-conchoidal fracture, though yielding to the nail; it includes laminae of selenite: the upper half precisely resembles the one layer at the Rio Negro, and with the exception of being whiter, the upper beds at San Josef and Nuevo Gulf.
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