394 W. G. RTDEWOOD. 



to remove the Old World forms Manis and Orycteropus, 

 to constitute two new orders by themselves. For the present 

 purpose, however, the relationships are not material, except 

 for the fact that the late traveller Ramon Lista saw and shot 

 at a curious animal in South America, which he likened to a 

 hairy and scaleless Pangolin. It is generally denied 

 (Ameghino [1], Lonnberg [7, p. 168]) that this "pangolin" 

 was the Mylodon of which the skin and bones have more 

 recently been found. 



Accounts of the various pieces of skin discovered have been 

 published by Ameghino (1), Lonnberg (7), Eotli (14), Smith 

 Woodward and Moreno (18), and Smith Woodward (19). 

 The locality from which Dr. Ameghino obtained his specimen 

 is not stated, but the other pieces of skin were found on 

 different occasions in the loose earth of a cavern near 

 Consuelo Cove, Last Hope Inlet, Patagonia. The deposit in 

 which they were found is regarded as of Pampean age, and 

 there can be no doubt that these ground sloths were con- 

 temporaneous with man, if not actually living in the cavern in 

 a state of domestication. 



Concerning the generic name, there appears to be no valid 

 reason why Mylodon should not be used. The genus was 

 first established by Owen in 1840 (11, p. 68), the type species 

 being Mylodon Darwinii. Two years later Owen (12) de- 

 scribed a nearly complete skeleton of a ground sloth which he 

 called robustus, and refen-ed to the same genus. Reinhardt 

 (13), writing in 1879, showed that the two species were 

 generically distinct, and renamed the earlier specimen 

 Grypotherium. If, however, the rules of priority are to be 

 observed at all, the term Mylodon should be retained for the 

 species Darwinii, and the robustus should be accorded a 

 new generic name. The argument that the species robustus 

 was fully described, whereas Darwinii was represented only 

 by a fragment of jaw, is obviously inadmissible, for if the 

 fragment is sufficiently perfect to enable Reinhardt's specimen 

 and those recently discovered to be regarded as generically 

 identical with it, it is sufficiently perfect and important to 



