599.31 . 324 
569.31 
591.9(8) 
III 
An Existing Ground-Sloth in Patagonia ? 
ANY times I have heard allusions to a mysterious: quadruped 
which is said to exist in the interior of the territory of 
Santa Cruz, living in burrows hollowed out in the soil, and usually 
only coming out at night. According to the reports of the Indians, 
it is a strange creature, with long claws and a terrifying appearance, 
impossible to kill because it has a body impenetrable alike to fire- 
arms and missiles. : 
It is several years since the late Ramon Lista, a traveller and 
geographer well known to the world of science, told both myself, 
my brother Charles, and several other persons—and _ had, I believe, 
even printed the statement in one of his works—that he had seen 
the mysterious quadruped in question. He came across it one day 
during one of his journeys in the interior of the territory of Santa 
Cruz, but in spite of all his efforts he was unable to capture it. 
Several shots failed to stop the animal, which soon disappeared in 
the brushwood ; all search for its recovery being useless. 
Lista retained a perfect recollection of the impression this 
encounter made upon him. According to him the animal was a 
pangolin (Janis), almost the same as the Indian one, both in size 
and in general aspect, except that in place of scales, it showed the 
body to be covered with a reddish grey hair. He was sure that if 
it were not a pangolin, it was certainly an edentate nearly allied 
to it. 
In spite of the authority of Lista, who, besides being a learned 
traveller, was also a skilled observer, I have always considered that 
he was mistaken, the victim of an illusion. Still, although I have 
several times tried to find out what animal might have given him 
the illusion of the pangolin, I was never able to guess. 
It was not an illusion. Although extremely rare and almost 
extinct, the mysterious animal exists, with the sole difference, that 
instead of being a pangolin, it is the last representative of a group 
1 Translated from a pamphlet entitled ‘‘ Premicre Notice sur le Neomylodon listai, 
un Représentant vivant des anciens Edentés Gravigrades fossiles de ]’Argentina,” by 
Florentino Ameghino, separately published by the author in the city of La Plata, Argen- 
tine Republic, August 1898. We have already noticed this important discovery (p. 288), 
but it is one of so much interest to zoologists that no apology is needed for directing 
further attention to the subject by reproducing the complete article. 
