Antediluvian America.

-- At a height superior to Mont Blanc, we find petrified sea-shells on the summit of the Andes.

The fossil bones of elephants are spread over the equinoctial regions of a continent, where the living elephant does not exist; and it is remarkable that these bones are not discovered at the foot of the palm trees in the burning plains of Orinoco, but in the coldest and most elevated regions of the Cordilleras.

In the New World, as well as the Old, generations of species long extinct have preceded those which now people the earth.

There is no proof that the existence of man is much more recent than in the other continent.

-- Humboldt.