To show the vast power of the wearing action of
sea-beaches, we need only appeal to the great cliffs along the
present coast of Patagonia, and to the escarpments or ancient
sea-cliffs at different levels, one above another, on that same
line of coast.
The old underlying tertiary formation at Coquimbo appears to be of
about the same age with several deposits on the coast of Chile (of
which that of Navedad is the principal one), and with the great
formation of Patagonia. Both at Navedad and in Patagonia there is
evidence, that since the shells (a list of which has been seen by
Professor E. Forbes) there intombed were living, there has been a
subsidence of several hundred feet, as well as an ensuing
elevation. It may naturally be asked how it comes that although no
extensive fossiliferous deposits of the recent period, nor of any
period intermediate between it and the ancient tertiary epoch, have
been preserved on either side of the continent, yet that at this
ancient tertiary epoch, sedimentary matter containing fossil
remains should have been deposited and preserved at different
points in north and south lines, over a space of 1100 miles on the
shores of the Pacific, and of at least 1350 miles on the shores of
the Atlantic, and in an east and west line of 700 miles across the
widest part of the continent? I believe the explanation is not
difficult, and that it is perhaps applicable to nearly analogous
facts observed in other quarters of the world.
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