126 ANDREW JACKSON HOWE. 



wing be evolved by a slow process? Besides, if there 

 were gradually modified forms, there is no fossil evi- 

 dence of the fact. It is possible for the flipper of the 

 penguin to be slowly transformed from a wing into its 

 present fin-like form. Always swimming and never 

 flying might exert a transforming influence. How- 

 ever, the chick penguin should be hatched with quills 

 in its pectoral limbs, which logically is the fact. This 

 calls to mind the circumstance that the young of sev- 

 eral kinds of animals do not resemble the parents in 

 color. The spotted fawn of the American deer squints 

 at a change of hue on the part of the parent which 

 had as an ancestor the mottled fallow deer of Europe. 

 The chicks of grouse are striped like the recently 

 hatched broods of domestic fowls. 



Palaeontology teaches that vast changes have 

 taken place in the size and general features of plants 

 and animals in certain portions of the earth. For in- 

 stance, there was a time when the megatherium, an 

 animal of huge proportions, inhabited Brazilian for- 

 ests. Being now extinct, the character of the great 

 beast has to be judged by its bones. A finely pre- 

 served skeleton is to be seen in the National Museum 

 of Madrid. The skeletal parts indicate that the ani- 

 mal in form and habits was allied to the sloth, a small 

 animal which now inhabits South American forests, 

 living among the branches of trees, and rarely coming 

 to the ground. The megatherium was strong enough 

 to uproot trees, that it might feed upon the twigs and 

 leaves, and the arboreal bradypus (sloth), with nails 

 developed into long hooks, lives where it can feed 

 upon foliage. Now, the question suggests itself 

 whether the gigantic animal was developed from the 

 little sloth, or the large animal degenerated into the 



