From Level of Sea to Surface of plain, 252 feet above sea, through levels F, E, D and C:
F.—Lower sandstone, with concretions and silicified bones, with fossil shells, all, or nearly all, extinct.
E.—Upper ferruginous sandstone, with numerous Balani, with fossil shells, all, or nearly all, extinct.
C and D.—Calcareous beds with recent shells.
A.—Stratified sand in a ravine, also with recent shells.)
For more than two hundred miles northward of Navidad, the coast consists of plutonic and metamorphic rocks, with the exception of some quite insignificant superficial beds of recent origin. At Tonguay, twenty-five miles south of Coquimbo, tertiary beds recommence. I have already minutely described in the Second Chapter, the step-formed plains of Coquimbo, and the upper calcareous beds (from twenty to thirty feet in thickness) containing shells of recent species, but in different proportions from those on the beach. There remains to be described only the underlying ancient tertiary beds, represented in Figure 21 by the letters F and E:—
I obtained good sections of bed F only in Herradura Bay: it consists of soft whitish sandstone, with ferruginous veins, some pebbles of granite, and concretionary layers of hard calcareous sandstone. These concretions are remarkable from the great number of large silicified bones, apparently of cetaceous animals, which they contain; and likewise of a shark’s teeth, closely resembling those of the Carcharias megalodon. Shells of the following species, of which the gigantic Oyster and Perna are the most conspicuous, are numerously embedded in the concretions:—
1. Bulla ambigua, d’Orbigny “Voyage” Pal. 2. Monoceros Blainvillii, d’Orbigny “Voyage” Pal. 3. Cardium auca, d’Orbigny “Voyage” Pal. 4. Panopaea Coquimbensis, d’Orbigny “Voyage” Pal. 5. Perna Gaudichaudi, d’Orbigny “Voyage” Pal. 6. Artemis ponderosa; Mr. Sowerby can find no distinguishing character between this fossil and the recent A. ponderosa; it is certainly an Artemis, as shown by the pallial impression. 7. Ostrea Patagonica (?); Mr. Sowerby can point out no distinguishing character between this species and that so eminently characteristic of the great Patagonian formation; but he will not pretend to affirm that they are identical. 8. Fragments of a Venus and Natica.
The cliffs on one side of Herradura Bay are capped by a mass of stratified shingle, containing a little calcareous matter, and I did not doubt that it belonged to the same recent formation with the gravel on the surrounding plains, also cemented by calcareous matter, until to my surprise, I found in the midst of it, a single thin layer almost entirely composed of the above gigantic oyster.
At a little distance inland, I obtained several sections of the bed E, which, though different in appearance from the lower bed F, belongs to the same formation: it consists of a highly ferruginous sandy mass, almost composed, like the lowest bed at Port S. Julian, of fragments of Balanidae; it includes some pebbles, and layers of yellowish-brown mudstone. The embedded shells consist of:—