del Obispo) which I examined, resembled those formed on many sea-coasts, with its bottom filled with shingle. These inland plains, instead of sloping towards the coast, are inclined in an opposite direction towards the Cordillera, like the successively rising terraces on the inland or eastern side of Chiloe: some points of granite, which project through the plains near the coast, no doubt once formed a chain of outlying islands, on the inland shores of which the plains were accumulated. At Bucalemu, a few miles northward of the Rapel, I observed at the foot, and on the summit-edge of a plain, ten miles from the coast, many recent shells, mostly comminuted, but some perfect. There were, also, many at the bottom of the great valley of the Maypu. At San Antonio, shells are said to be collected and burnt for lime. At the bottom of a great ravine (Quebrada Onda, on the road to Casa Blanca), at the distance of several miles from the coast, I noticed a considerable bed, composed exclusively of Mesodesma donaciforme, Desh., lying on a bed of muddy sand: this shell now lives associated together in great numbers, on tidal-flats on the coast of Chile.
VALPARAISO.
During two successive years I carefully examined, part of the time in company with Mr. Alison, into all the facts connected with the recent elevation of this neighbourhood. In very many parts a beach of broken shells, about fourteen or fifteen feet above high-water mark, may be observed; and at this level the coast-rocks, where precipitous, are corroded in a band. At one spot, Mr. Alison, by removing some birds' dung, found at this same level barnacles adhering to the rocks. For several miles southward of the bay, almost every flat little headland, between the heights of 60 and 230 feet (measured by the barometer), is smoothly coated by a thick mass of comminuted shells, of the same species, and apparently in the same proportional numbers with those existing in the adjoining sea. The Concholepas is much the most abundant, and the best preserved shell; but I extracted perfectly preserved specimens of the Fissurella biradiata, a Trochus and Balanus (both well-known, but according to Mr. Sowerby yet unnamed) and parts of the Mytilus Chiloensis. Most of these shells, as well as an encrusting Nullipora, partially retain their colour; but they are brittle, and often stained red from the underlying brecciated mass of primary rocks; some are packed together, either in black or reddish moulds; some lie loose on the bare rocky surfaces. The total number of these shells is immense; they are less numerous, though still far from rare, up a height of 1,000 feet above the sea. On the summit of a hill, measured 557 feet, there was a small horizontal band of comminuted shells, of which MANY consisted (and likewise from lesser heights) of very young and small specimens of the still living Concholepas, Trochus, Patellae, Crepidulae, and of Mytilus Magellanicus (?) (Mr. Cuming informs me that he does not think this species identical with, though closely resembling, the true M. Magellanicus of the southern and eastern coast of South America; it lives abundantly on the coast of Chile.): several of these shells were under a quarter of an inch in their greatest diameter. My attention was called to this circumstance by a native fisherman, whom I took to look at these shell-beds; and he ridiculed the notion of such small shells having been brought up for food; nor could some of the species have adhered when alive to other larger shells. On another hill, some miles distant, and 648 feet high, I found shells of the Concholepas and Trochus, perfect, though very old, with fragments of Mytilus Chiloensis, all embedded in reddish-brown mould: I also found these same species, with fragments of an Echinus and of Balanus psittacus, on a hill 1,000 feet high. Above this height, shells became very rare, though on a hill 1,300 feet high (Measured by the barometer: the highest point in the range behind Valparaiso I found to be 1,626 feet above the level of the sea.), I collected the Concholepas, Trochus, Fissurella, and a Patella.