Animals Before Man 



montli or two during tlie dry season, and then, 

 hungry and wet, in the heavy downpour of the 

 beginning rainy season, setting to work to 

 break his fast. As far as can be judged by 

 the tools he had to work with — paws a yard, 

 and claws a foot, in length — the first thing to 

 be done was to throw out a few hundred- 

 weights of earth from the roots of some 

 large tree. 



" Now he changes his tactics ; he has good 

 collar-bones, and well-developed arms for em- 

 bracing; so, bear-like, he hugs the tree upon 

 which his desires are set, and busily digging 

 still, not now with his fore but with his hind 

 paws, his great weight resting upon his 

 haunches and tail, he, with many groans, sways 

 the big tree to and fro ; at last with a great 

 crash it falls, not, however, without giving him 

 some sense of its weight, for it was a tree 

 worthy to grow in a forest trampled upon by 

 this Atlantean sloth." 



This huge beast came as far north on the 

 coast as North Carolina and its bones are 

 among those found in the river phosphate beds, 



254 



