318 ANNUAL RECORD OF SCIENCE AND INDUSTRY. 



RELATIONS OF THE MEGATHERIID^. 



On a previous page of the Record we gave an abstract of 

 a memoir by Dr. Burmeister on a group ( Glyptodontidm) of 

 extinct gigantic " edentate " mammals of South America re- 

 lated to the living armadillos. We are now enabled to add 

 the results of the latest investigations into a related group 

 {Megatheriidce) of the same order, also confined to America, 

 but common to North and South, as published by Professor 

 Paul Gervais, of Paris. The megatheriids have their nearest 

 relations among the sloths of the present epoch, but form a 

 very distinct family, having less strict affinities also with the 

 glyptodonts. They are supposed by Gervais to have differed 

 in habits, although agreeing in being ground and not arboreal 

 animals, their great size forbidding their residence among 

 trees like their living relations. Most of them are believed 

 by Gervais to have lived upon ants and termites, their pow- 

 erful claws having probably been employed for digging into 

 the ant-hills ; but, at the same time, it is conceded that they 

 may have in part subsisted on vegetable matter. One of the 

 genera {Lestodon)^ however, was carnivorous. 



Nine genera are admitted by Professor Gervais, and are 

 distinguished by differences of dentition as well as of the 

 skeleton. They are distributed as follows : 



1. Megatherium North and South America. 



2. Coelodon Brazil. 



3. Lestodon known only by remains in the museum at 

 Paris. 



4. Megalonyx North and South America. Remains from 

 Cuba have been described under the names Megalochnus and 

 Myomorphus. 



5. Mylodon North and South America. 



6. Scelidotherium^ or Platyonyx South America. 



7. Sipherodon South America. 



8. A new genus, unnamed, from the Argentine Confedera- 

 tion. 



9. Another new unnamed genus, represented by a heel 

 bone (calcaneum), obtained in Brazil, and which indicates an 

 animal as large as the Scelidotheriiim, and larger than the 

 Megalonyx. 



In the opinion of Professor Gervais, the edentates consti- 



