A Mysterious Beast 219 



to devote at least a paragraph to the remarkable 

 discovery. In a lecture before the Zoological Society 

 Dr. (now Sir) Edwin Ray Lankester said, "It is quite 

 possible that the Mylodon still exists in some of the 

 mountainous regions of Patagonia. ' Thereupon Mr. 

 Pearson, the proprietor of the Daily Express of London, 

 promptly provided the necessary funds for equipping 

 an expedition to go and search for the beast, and Mr. 

 Hesketh Prichard was sent out to find it. The result 

 was a beautifully-illustrated work upon Patagonia by 

 Mr. Prichard, but no Mylodon, no Yemisch was re- 

 turned to the London Zoo. 



Meanwhile the little group of hard-headed scientific 

 men at the Museum in La Plata and their correspond- 

 ents elsewhere took the matter in hand and addressed 

 in public some very embarrassing questions to Serior 

 Ameghino, whose enthusiasm appeared to them to 

 have rather gotten the better of his judgment. The 

 paleontological teapot began to simmer and then to 

 boil. It was a good deal like the "row,' which broke 

 up the "camp on the Stanislaw, ' though there was no 

 ' heaving of rocks. ' Dr. Rodolfo Hauthal went back 

 to Consuelo Cove and made a careful reexamination 

 of the cave. His published report, which appeared in 

 the Revista of the Museum in La Plata, is most interest- 

 ing and illuminating. He shows that the cave had no 

 doubt at one time been used as a human habitation, 

 and that its occupants, if they had not domesticated 

 the great and thoroughly inoffensive ground-sloth, had 

 at least held it in captivity. He found that part of the 

 cave had been used as a stable for the brutes, and that 

 in one place there was a deposit of the dried dung of 

 the animals about four feet in depth, showing that the 

 spot must have been used for a long time. He found a 



