This region has not been carefully explored, but from the concurrent testimony of travellers, the granitic area is very large: thus Von Eschwege gives a detailed section of these rocks, stretching from Rio de Janeiro for 260 geographical miles inland in a straight line; and I travelled for 150 miles in another direction, and saw nothing but granitic rocks.

Numerous specimens, collected along the whole coast, from near Rio de Janeiro to the mouth of the Plata, a distance of 1,100 geographical miles, were examined by me, and they all belonged to this class.

Inland, along the whole northern bank of the Plata, I saw, besides modern tertiary beds, only one small patch of slightly metamorphosed rock, which alone could have formed a part of the original capping of the granitic series.

Turning to a well-known region, namely, to the United States and Canada, as shown in Professor H.D.
Rogers' beautiful map, I have estimated the areas by cutting out and weighing the paper, and I find that the metamorphic (excluding the "semi-metamorphic") and granite rocks exceed, in the proportion of 19 to 12.5, the whole of the newer Palaeozoic formations.

In many regions the metamorphic and granite rocks would be found much more widely extended than they appear to be, if all the sedimentary beds were removed which rest unconformably on them, and which could not have formed part of the original mantle under which they were crystallised.