1398 THE EDENTATES 



more than a yard in length. The extremity of such a tube, showing the large 

 bony plates with which its surface is covered, is shown in the accompanying cut. 

 Another gigantic kind from the pampas, distinguished by the tail terminating 

 in a huge flattened club, armed during life with horns, is known as Doedicurus. In 

 the Miocene beds of Patagonia all the glyptodonts were of smaller size. 



THE PANGOLINS 

 Family MANID^Z 



Stranger even than the armadillos are the Edentates commonly known as pan- 

 golins, or scaly ant-eaters, which may be compared in appearance to an animated 

 spruce-fir cone furnished with a head and legs. These creatures constitute a family 

 by themselves, in which there is but a single genus Manis, and, like the remain- 



SKEI.ETON OF PANGOUN. 



ing representatives of the order, they are confined to the Old World. As already 

 mentioned, the relationship of the pangolins to the typical New- World Edentates is 

 remote, and it may be even questioned whether the group is rightly included in the 

 same order. Their internal anatomy is of a different type, and the joints of the 

 backbone lack the additional articular processes characterizing most of the American 

 Edentates. 



The pangolins may be briefly characterized as a family by the total want of 

 teeth, and by the upper surface and sides of the body and the whole tail being cov- 

 ered with a number of large, overlapping horny scales. Their limbs are short, with 

 five toes on each foot, and the long, worm-like tongue is capable of being protruded 

 a great distance from the small mouth. The head is small, long, and pointed, with 

 the eyes small, and the external conchs of the ears minute or rudimentary. The 

 scales of the body extend on to the outer sides of the limbs; but they are absent 

 from the inner surfaces of the latter, as well as from the sides of the head and the 

 inferior aspect of the body, all of which are sparsely covered with hair. There are 

 often a few coarse, bristly hairs arising from between the scales. All the toes have 

 slightly-curved claws, which are much longer in the front than in the hind-feet, and 



