280 Zoological Society. 



" strutts or braces" in the support of its heavy shell; whilst in the 

 Tortoise a similar object is effected by the small osseous supports 

 which proceed from its anchylosed spine. 



7. Both in the Armadillo and Tortoise the ossa ilia appear to serve 

 as additional supports to the shell. 



Sect. II. Of the Relation of the Edentatous Mammalia to the 

 Reptiles. 



1. In the Two-toed Anteater the ribs are so broad as to overlap 

 each other like tiles (Cuvier, Lectures on Comparative Anatomy, 

 translated by Ross, 1802, vol. i. p. 209). This is, I believe, the nearest 

 resemblance amongst other Vertebrata to the bony case of the Tor- 

 toises. In the Armadillo the first pair of ribs are broader than they 

 are long (Owen, Zool. Proc. ii. p. 135). 



2. In the large number of the ribs of the Unau, we have what 

 Prof. Owen has termed a lacertine character (on Mylodon, p. 166). 



3. Like the Tortoises, &c. amongst Reptiles, the Anteaters and 

 Pangolins are deprived of teeth ; whilst those Edentata which are 

 furnished with them approximate to the dentition of some of the 

 Reptilia in the uniform character of the series ; and in the subgenus 

 Priodontes of Fred. Cuvier in the extremely large number, namely 

 eighty-eight or ninety-six in all. 



4. The Edentata, like the Reptiles, are remarkable for the pro- 

 pensity to develope coats of mail of various kinds ; sometimes conti- 

 nuous ; in other instances, of detached and separate scales ; some- 

 times, to continue the simile, like plate-armour; sometimes like 

 scale-armour. The Armadillos, the Chlamyphorus, the Pangolins, 

 and some of the extinct Megatheroids, exhibit this amongst the 

 Edentates ; whilst almost all the Reptiles partake in measure of this 

 character. 



5. The Anteater and Manis are destitute of the power of emitting 

 sounds (Blumenbach's Anatomy, translation by Lawrence, 1807, 

 p. 278). This incapacity approximates them to the Reptiles, and par- 

 ticularly distinguishes them from Birds and most of the Mammalia. 

 In this character however most of the Marsupiata partake. 



6. Waterton, in his ' Wanderings,' furnishes us with a highly 

 graphic description of the habits of the Myrmecophaga jubata. From 

 the extracts I shall make, the similarity of this animal to the Reptiles 

 will be manifest in three important points, viz. the slowness of its 

 movements, the tenacity with which it retains any object which it has 

 seized, the length of time which it can pass uninjured without food ; 

 and probably a fourth — the tenacity of life and muscular power. The 

 Tortoises exhibit these phenomena of muscular irritability perhaps as 

 well as any genus amongst the Reptiles. 



" He {Myrmecophaga jubata) cannot travel fast, for man is superior 

 to him in speed Whenever he seizes an animal with these for- 

 midable weapons (his claws), he hugs it close to his body and keeps 

 it there till it dies through pressure or through want of food. Nor 

 does the Antbear in the meantime suffer much from want of aliment, 

 for it is a well-known fact that he can go longer without food than 



