SUPPLEMENT. 197 



not a Ruminant. But if the great animal fed on foliage, how did it obtain 

 it? The Elephant gathers its food with a long proboscis. The Giraffe, stand- 

 ing on stilt-like fore-legs, and reaching out its attenuated neck, plucks the 

 high branches with long flexible lips and muscular tongue. The Megather- 

 ium could imitate neither. Did it climb like the Sloth? Such was the con- 

 jecture of the Danish Naturalist, Dr. Lund ; but the clumsy make and the 

 immense bulk and weight of the creature forbid it. The structure of the 

 fore-feet, moreover, militates against the theory ; for the outer digit is hoof- 

 like, as if made for terrestrial progression. The hind-legs, too, are much 

 shorter than the fore-legs ; and the tail is too short and thick for prehensile 

 purposes. 



The fossorial hypothesis, too, has no better foundation than the scansorial. 

 In burrowing animals, as the Mole, the pelvis is remarkably slender, and the 

 claws form a continuous plane with the palm of the foot ; while in the Mega- 

 therium the pelvis is remarkably large, and not one of the claws can be 

 brought into a line with the metacarpus. The fore arms are plainly formed 

 for grasping, not climbing or digging ; they were instruments of tremendous 

 strength, evidence of which is furnished by the deep groves and sharp ridges 

 on the radius and ulna, the starting points of stout tendons and muscles. 

 The moment we estimate this force, the colossal proportions of the hind-ex- 

 tremities lose their anomaly and harmonize with the front. The application 

 of the fore-arms to the work of tearing down a tree would demand a corres- 

 ponding fulcrum, such as we find in the heavy pelvis, the ponderous tail and 

 massive hind-legs. 



The Megatherium needed not agility for securing prey, for it was not car- 

 niverous ; nor for flight, for its size alone must have been a protection against 

 any living foe. Had we beheld it living on its native plains, its slow move- 

 ment would have excited our wonder as well as its bulk. It was doubtless a' 

 solitary animal. The gathering together in herds was not required for self- 

 defence ; indeed the necessities of the creature to obtain an enormous daily 

 supply of food would not have allowed it, unless the vegetation of that day 

 was far more dense than is the modern vegetation of the same region. When 

 stripping the trees it has prostrated, its position was probably a reclining one; 

 and Professor Agassiz has ventured the opinion that this crouching attitude 

 was constant to the animal, and that it crept along with the full length of its 

 forearm resting upon the ground. 



The Pampas, where the remains of the great fossils have been chiefly 

 found, are vast plains stretching from the mountains of Brazil to Terra del 

 Fuego. Palms grow at one end, while snow covers the other almo.st the en- 

 tire year. The soil is chiefly a dull-reddish, slightly indurated, argillaceous 

 earth, with here and there calcareous concretions ; underneath are beds of 

 stratified gravel and conglomerate. These deposits constitute the Pampean 

 formation, which varies in depth from twenty to one hundred feet. It was 

 in this recent formation — referable to the Quaternary period, because most of 

 its shells are still living in the ocean — that the Megatherium was entombed. 

 Like the Aborigines of our own continent, like the Dodo of Mauritius, the 

 Edentate giants perished one after another, in the lapse of infinite ages, by 

 those changes of circumstances in the organic and inorganic world which are 

 always in progress. Price of bones packed but not painted $250. 



No. [128.] Elephas Ganesa, Falc. and Caut. 



Skull with Tusks. This remarkable Asiatic Elephant, long ago extinct. 



