BEASTS OF MONSTROUS SIZE 



It is true that there were enormous reptiles in the 

 past, far larger than any Uving crocodiles, stand- 

 ing fourteen feet at the loins and measuring 

 eighty feet from the tip of the snout to the tip 

 of the tail ; but their bodies did not weigh much 

 more than that of a big African elephant and 

 were small compared with whales. So let us be 

 under no illusions as to extinct monsters, and 

 proceed to look at those of South America with 

 simple courage and confidence in our own day. 

 South America (see the map. Fig. 42) was 

 not so long ago a vast island and connected at 

 an earlier period with Austraha. Later it has 

 joined on to North America. Its own peculiar 

 productions in the way of animals appear to be 

 the members of the group of mammals called 

 Edentata — very peculiar forms, with strange 

 teeth, and none at all in the front of the jaws. 

 From North America, when it joined on there, 

 it received the mastodons, horses, tigers, tapirs, 

 and other kinds produced in the Holarctic area. 

 This seems to have led to the dying out of the 

 big kinds of Edentata, and now there are only 

 the small tree-sloths (Fig. 118), the small arma- 

 dilloes (Fig. 119) and the strange -looking ant- 

 eaters. But in quite late geological deposits in 



167 • 



