RODENTIA. 159 



is about the size of a small Rabbit j is covered with long, close and 

 fine hair, the softest that is known among common furs. The ears 

 are large and half naked ; the tail, one-third the length of the body, 

 is furnished with stiffer hairs, so arranged as to give it the appear- 

 ance of being laterally compressed. The fore feet have four toes 

 with a vestige of a thumb ; the hinder ones have only three. This 

 quadruped inhabits the mountains of South America. 



The Viscache, as described by Azzara (Quadr. du Parag., Tr. Fr. 

 II, p. 41), and such as we have seen it figured, can hardly be any 

 other than a large species of Chinchilla, with shorter and coarser 

 fur.(l) 



ORDER VL 



EDENTATA. 



The Edentata, or quadrupeds without front teeth, will 

 form our last order of unguiculated animals. Although united 

 by a character purely negative, they have, nevertheless, some 

 positive mutual relations, and particularly large nails, which 

 embrace the extremities of the toes, approaching more or less 

 to the nature of hoofs : a slowness, a want of agility, obviously 

 arising from the peculiar organization of their limbs. There 

 are, however, certain intervals in these relations, which ren- 

 der it necessary to divide the order into three tribes. The 

 first of these is the 



TARDIGRADA. 



They have a short face. Their name originates froai their 

 excessive slowness, the consequence of a construction truly 

 heteroclite, in which nature seems to have amused herself by 

 producing something imperfect and grotesque. The only 

 genus now in existence is 



(1) The fig'iircs were communicated to us by M. Hamilton Smith and M. Brookes. 

 It is the animal described under the name of Gerbolse geante, by De Blainville, in 

 Desmarets' Mammal., 315, and Nouv. Diet. d'Hist. Nat. XIII, lir, and figured in 

 Griffith's ed. of the present work, under that of Marmot Diana. 



