Tlie Life of Yesterday 



The great ground sloths wliicli were charac- 

 teristic of later Pliocene times lingered on, and 

 in the warmer intervals occupied portions of 

 the woodlands as far north as Ohio, and even 

 Oreo:on. These were creatures short of limb 

 and heavy of body, whose coarse teeth indicate 

 that they fed on leaves and twigs. The sloths 

 of to-day dwell in the tree tops, but these sloths 

 of a geologic yesterday were far too large for 

 tree-dwellers, so large that a Spanish naturalist 

 objected to their being classed with the eden- 

 tates, on the ground that all the other members 

 of the group could dance in the body of a 

 single specimen. However, as noted in various 

 places, size is not a character, and although 

 Megatherium (the largest member of the 

 group) had the bulk, if not the height, of 

 an elephant, its place is with the sloth and 

 ant-eater. 



The probable habits of these huge ground 

 sloths have been so vividly pictured by W. K. 

 Parker that one can not do better than copy 

 his words : " Let us," he says, " try to imagine 

 a megatherium waking up after lazily dozing a 



253 



