Nevertheless, From The Following
Considerations, I Do Not Believe That The Simple Fact
Of Many Gigantic Quadrupeds Having Lived On The Plains
Round Bahia Blanca, Is Any Sure Guide That They Formerly
Were Clothed With A Luxuriant Vegetation:
I have no doubt
that the sterile country a little southward, near the Rio
Negro, with its scattered thorny trees, would support many
and large quadrupeds.
That large animals require a luxuriant vegetation, has
been a general assumption which has passed from one work
to another; but I do not hesitate to say that it is completely
false, and that it has vitiated the reasoning of geologists
on some points of great interest in the ancient history of
the world. The prejudice has probably been derived from
India, and the Indian islands, where troops of elephants,
noble forests, and impenetrable jungles, are associated together
in every one's mind. If, however, we refer to any
work of travels through the southern parts of Africa, we
shall find allusions in almost every page either to the desert
character of the country, or to the numbers of large animals
inhabiting it. The same thing is rendered evident
by the many engravings which have been published of various
parts of the interior. When the Beagle was at Cape
Town, I made an excursion of some days' length into the
country, which at least was sufficient to render that which
I had read more fully intelligible.
Dr. Andrew Smith, who, at the head of his adventurous
party, has lately succeeded in passing the Tropic of Capricorn,
informs me that, taking into consideration the whole
of the southern part of Africa, there can be no doubt of its
being a sterile country. On the southern and south-eastern
coasts there are some fine forests, but with these exceptions,
the traveller may pass for days together through open plains,
covered by a poor and scanty vegetation. It is difficult to
convey any accurate idea of degrees of comparative fertility;
but it may be safely said that the amount of vegetation
supported at any one time [5] by Great Britain, exceeds,
perhaps even tenfold, the quantity on an equal area, in the
interior parts of Southern Africa. The fact that bullock-
waggons can travel in any direction, excepting near the
coast, without more than occasionally half an hour's delay
in cutting down bushes, gives, perhaps, a more definite notion
of the scantiness of the vegetation. Now, if we look to the
animals inhabiting these wide plains, we shall find their
numbers extraordinarily great, and their bulk immense. We
must enumerate the elephant, three species of rhinoceros,
and probably, according to Dr. Smith, two others, the hippopotamus,
the giraffe, the bos caffer - as large as a full-grown
bull, and the elan - but little less, two zebras, and the
quaccha, two gnus, and several antelopes even larger than these
latter animals. It may be supposed that although the species
are numerous, the individuals of each kind are few.
By the kindness of Dr. Smith, I am enabled to show that
the case is very different.
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