EASTERN TIERRA DEL FUEGO.
Judging from the height, the general appearance, and the white colour of the patches visible on the hill sides, the uppermost plain, both on the north and western side of the Strait of Magellan, and along the eastern coast of Tierra del Fuego as far south as near Port St. Polycarp, probably belongs to the great Patagonian tertiary formation, These higher table- ranges are fringed by low, irregular, extensive plains, belonging to the boulder formation (Described in the “Geological Transactions” volume 6 page 415.), and composed of coarse unstratified masses, sometimes associated (as north of C. Virgin’s) with fine, laminated, muddy sandstones. The cliffs in Sebastian Bay are 200 feet in height, and are composed of fine sandstones, often in curvilinear layers, including hard concretions of calcareous sandstone, and layers of gravel. In these beds there are fragments of wood, legs of crabs, barnacles encrusted with corallines still partially retaining their colour, imperfect fragments of a Pholas distinct from any known species, and of a Venus, approaching very closely to, but slightly different in form from, the V. lenticularis, a species living on the coast of Chile. Leaves of trees are numerous between the laminae of the muddy sandstone; they belong, as I am informed by Dr. J.D. Hooker, to three species of deciduous beech, different from the two species which compose the great proportion of trees in this forest-clad land. (“Botany of the Antarctic Voyage” page 212.) From these facts it is difficult to conjecture, whether we here see the basal part of the great Patagonian formation, or some later deposit.