EDENTATA. 223 



From this, it appears almost certain that the majoritj' did not survive the glacial epoch. If 

 any did it must have been the Megalonyx or Mylodon, and their age depends upon caves which 

 might have served for two epochs, and have little to guide one but their contents. I believe, too, 

 (although I do not speak with certainty,) that in the few instances in which remains have been 

 found in post-glacial deposits, a single bone or tooth found on a single occasion is all that has 

 been met with ; which, I need not say, is the fashion in which bones washed out of an older 

 deposit and preserved in a more recent one invariably occur. One may, therefore, speculate on 

 the causes which led to their extinction, without being hampered by the feeling that the excei^tions, 

 which appear to have survived the glacial epoch, are absolutely incapable of explanation ; and if 

 that be so, no more Likely cause for their extinction can well be given than the change of climate 

 brought about by the glacial epoch. I have the less hesitation in doing so, in that the statement 

 of my doubt may suggest inquiry to those who have the opportunity of making it, and lead to 

 an authoritative settlement of the question. 



"We have already satisfied ourselves that the cold of that epoch affected the whole earth, tropics 

 as well as poles (of course in different degrees). The larger Edentata seem to have been, not only, 

 from their habitat, but also from their mode of life, peculiarly tropical animals, and it therefore 

 follows, peculiarly unfitted to bear any great degree of cold. An amount of change which, in other 

 animals, may only have been sufficient to stimulate the action of development into the creation of 

 new species, may in them have been too great for the continuance of life, and have killed them off 

 altogether. 



The reasoning by which the habits of these large Edentate animals have been inferred from 

 their structure, has always appeared to me a series of the happiest exercises of the inductive faculty. 



Seventy years ago, Curier (then in the fulness of his fame) was the first to throw light upon their 

 natm-e. A nearly complete skeleton had been found on the banks of the river Luxan, near Buenos 

 Ayres, in 1789, and transmitted to Spain by a Spanish official, where it was preserved in the museum 

 at Madrid ; and a memoir containing a description and figure of the bones was published by Signers 

 Garrigo and Bru,* in 1796, and submitted to Cuvier for his opinion. Their judgment went little 

 further than that announced in their title-page that it was "un quadrupcdo muy corpidento y 

 raro," — a very bulky and rare quadruped. But Cu\-ier at once assigned it its true position as one 

 of the Edentata, and he thus summed up his conclusions as to its habits and food : " Its teeth 

 proved that it lived on vegetables, and its robust fore-feet armed with sharp claws make us believe 

 that it was principall}' their roots that it attacked. Its magnitude and talons must have given it 

 sufficient means of defence. It was not of swift course, nor was this requisite, the animal needing 

 neither to pursue nor to fl)'."! And subsequently (1823) he pronounced that it had the head 

 and tl\e shoulder of a Sloth, whilst the legs and the feet offer a singular mixtui-e of characters 

 peculiar to the Ant-eaters and Armadillos. J 



About the same time (1821) two German naturalists, Drs. Pander and Dalton, who published 

 a beautiful monograph of the skeleton, gave it as their opinion that it was a fossorial animal, and 

 not merely an occasional digger of the soil, as Cuvier concluded, but altogether a creature of sub- 

 terranean habits, — in fact, as Owen expressed it, a sort of Earth-whale or colossal Mole. 



* "Descripcion del Esqueleto de un Quadrupcdo muy in the " Annales du Museum," 1796. 

 corpulento y raro." Don Joseph Garrigo, Madrid, 179C. X CuvniR, " Rcoherchcs sur les Ossemens fossiles," V. 



t CuviEu'.s translation of the Memoir by Don Garrigo part I. 1823. 



