354 Professor Owen on 



they are better adapted for grasping ; and the whole structure 

 of the fore foot militates against the hypothesis of Pander 

 and d' Alton, that the Megatherium was a burrowing animal. 

 The same structure equally shows that it was not, as Dr 

 Lund supposes, a scansorial quadruped ; for, in the degree 

 in which the foot departs from the structure of that of the 

 existing Sloths, it is unfitted for climbing ; and the outer 

 digit is modified, after the ungulate type, for the exclusive 

 office of supporting the body in ordinary terrestrial progres- 

 sion. It may be inferred from the diminished curvature and 

 length, and from the increased strength and the inequality of 

 the claws, especially the disproportionately large size of that 

 weapon of the middle digit, that the fore foot of the Mega- 

 therium was occasionally applied by the short and strong 

 fore limb in the act of digging ; but its analogy to that of 

 the Ant-eaters teaches that the fossorial actions were limited 

 to the removal of the surface soil, in order to expose some- 

 thing there concealed, and not for the purpose of burrowing. 

 Such an instrument would be equally effective in the dis- 

 turbance of roots and ants ; it is, however, still better adapted 

 for grasping than for delving. But to whatever task the 

 partially unguiculate hand of the Megatherium might have 

 been applied, the bones of the wrist, fore-arm, arm and 

 shoulder, attest the prodigious force which would be brought 

 to bear upon its execution. The general organization of the 

 anterior extremity of the Megatherium is incompatible with 

 its being a strictly scansorial or exclusively fossorial animal, 

 and its teeth and jaws decidedly negative the idea of its hav- 

 ing fed upon insects ; the two extremes in regard to the length 

 of the jaws are presented by the phyllophagous and myrme- 

 cophagous members of the Edentate order, and the Mega- 

 therium in the shortness of its face agrees with the Sloths. 



Proceeding then to other parts of the skeleton for the solu- 

 tion of the question as to how the Megatherium obtained its 

 leafy food, the author remarks that the pelvis and hind limbs 

 of the strictly burrowing animals, e.g., the Mole, are remark- 

 ably slender and feeble, and that they offer no notable 

 development in the Rabbit, the Orycterope, or other less 

 powerful excavators. In the climbing animals, as, e.g., the 



