GIANT SLOTHS AND ARMADILLOS. 181 
afterwards showed, by most clear and convincing reasoning from 
the skeleton, that the Megatherium could not have been pro- 
tected as armadillos are, by such a shield (see p. 190). 
And now we come to the question how it obtained its food. 
The idea of digging round trees with its claws in order to uproot 
them, must be partly, if not entirely, given up; for Professor 
Owen has proved, by a masterly piece of reasoning, that this 
cumbrous creature, instead of climbing up trees as modern sloths 
do, actually pulled down the tree bodily, or broke it short off 
above the ground by a dour de force, and, in order to do so, sat up 
on its huge haunches and tail as on a tripod, while it grasped the 
trunk in its long powerful arms! Marvellous as this may seem, 
it can be shown that every detail in its skeleton agrees with the 
idea. Of course there would be limits to possibilities in this 
direction, and the larger trees of the period must have been proof 
against any such Samson-like attempts on the part of the Mega- 
therium ; but when the trunk was too big, doubtless it pulled 
down some of the lower branches. Plate XVIII. is a restoration, 
by our artist, of the South Kensington skeleton. 
Speaking of the extinct sloths of South America, Mr. Darwin 
thus describes Professor Owen’s remarkable discovery: “The 
habits of these Megatheroid animals were a complete puzzle to 
naturalists until Professor Owen solved the problem with remark- 
able ingenuity. Their teeth indicate by their simple structure 
that these animals . . . lived on vegetable food, and probably 
on the leaves and small twigs of trees ; their ponderous forms and 
great strong curved claws seem so little adapted for locomotion, 
that some eminent naturalists believed that, like sloths, to which 
they are intimately related, they subsisted by climbing, back 
downwards, on trees, and feeding on the leaves. It was a bold, 
not to say preposterous, idea to conceive even antediluvian trees 
with branches strong enough to bear animals as large as 
elephants. Professor Owen, with far more probability, believes 
that, instead of climbing on trees, they pulled the branches down 
