A R M A D I L L O. 



201 



nr.iy now leave loss of the muscular or giz- 

 zard structure than when their food was more of a 

 vegetable character. 



This effect of the colonisation of South America 

 upon the armadillos is probably a greater anomaly in 

 the etlect of colonisation upon wild animals generally 

 than the armadillos themselves appear to be in the 

 class mammalia. The bear, the buffalo, and many 

 other of the wild animals of North America, have 

 vanished from great part of the United States ; the 

 antelopes of Southern Africa have, many of them, 

 ceased to appear within the territory of the Cape; 

 and even the kangaroo of Australia is a rare animal, 

 compared with what it was when the colony was first 

 established in that part of the world. All these are 

 animals more resembling those which are domesti- 

 cated and attended to in Europe than the armadillos ; 

 and yet these appear to be the only race of living 

 creatures, natives of a colonised land, which have 

 reallv and substantially benefited by colonisation. 



The armadillos are classed in the order of Edentata, 

 or toothless animals, and, though they all have teeth, 

 and some of them a greater number than perhaps any 

 other of the mammalia, they are not improperly so 

 classed, as their teeth neither have the structure nor 

 perform the functions of teeth properly so called ; 

 whether they should form a sub-order, or group, or 

 only a genus, as at present, is another matter, but not 

 one of very much importance in the knowledge or use 

 of natural history. There are points of family like- 

 ness among all the Edentata, from the sloths to the 

 scaly f>fiiigo/hi.i, though the first of these more resem- 

 ble the ordinary mammalia, and the last more resem- 

 ble the Manotremata, at least in some points of their 

 structure. Still the edentata, though curious animals, 

 form perhaps as natural an order as any of the others ; 

 and were it not for the single structural peculiarity 

 from which they are pamed, that order might include 

 tin 1 inonotremata. 



For the reason already mentioned, the JLinnrcan 

 division into species, founded on the number of sepa- 

 rate plates between the buckler on the shoulders and 

 that on the crupper, is inapplicable, and though it 

 were applicable, nothing could be founded upon it, 

 and therefore it is useless. Baron Cuvier's five sec- 

 tions or subgenera are perhaps the best arrangement 

 in the present state of our knowledge ; but they too 

 are founded chiefly upon external characters, and 

 some of those characters appears a little inconsistent, 

 as, for instance, distinguishing, by the number of their 

 teeth, animals of which the general character is that 

 they are toothless. Cuvier's sections are Cachicames, 

 Apars, Encouberts, Cabassous, and Priodontcs, the 

 first and third containing three species each, and the 

 remaining three only one each, making in all nine 

 known species. We shall shortly notice the sections 

 in their order. 



CACHICAMES. These have seven or eight teeth in 

 each side of both jaws, the muzzle long and pointed, 

 and the tail also long. They have four toes on the 

 fore feet, and five on the hind ones. The claws on 

 the two middle anterior toes are very large and 

 strong ; the lateral ones, especially the inner, are 

 much shorter, hut also strong and well adapted for 

 digging. The. fore feet thus form pointed spades, 

 which penetrate the earth much better than if the 

 claws were all of equal length. The species included 

 in this section are said to be more vegetable in their 

 feeding than some of the others ; some of them come 



abroad from their burrows during the day, and run 

 with considerable swiftness. The following are the 

 species. 



1. The Peba (Dasj/pm peba]. This is the pig- 

 headed armadillo of Grew, the nine-banded, the 

 eight-banded and the seven-banded of some of the 

 systematists ; and they might have added six-banded, 

 for some individuals have that number. It is said 

 that the additional bands are formed by separation 

 from the bucklers, or rather by the production of 

 new matter, as the markings of the bands and buck- 

 lers are not the same, and that these take place 

 as the animal increases in age and size. 



The Peba. 



The usual length of the full-grown peba is about 

 one foot four from the point of the snout to the root 

 of the tail, and the tail is about one foot two, making 

 the total length of the animal two feet and a half. 

 The head is long and slender, the muzzle much pro- 

 duced, and terminating in a snout not very unlike 

 that of a pig. The ears are rather long, and stand 

 close together on the top of the head ; and the eyes, 

 which are small, and have the opening of their lids 

 nearly lengthways, are placed in the middle of the 

 sides of the head. The gape extends a considerable 

 way backwards, and there are eight straggling teeth 

 in each side of both jaws. The buckler or helmet 

 on the head extends from the ears to the muzzle, and 

 in breadth to the orbits of the eyes, which it partly 

 overshadows and protects. There are small hard 

 scales on the ears, and partially on the cheeks, throat, 

 and other parts of the under side of the body. The 

 buckler on the shoulders inclines forward on each 

 side of the neck, and reaches down till it completely 

 conceals the elbows ; it is made up of a series of 

 united stripes or pieces, increasing in breadth as they 

 advance towards the back, and all of them slightly 

 concave toward the head. These stripes are formed 

 of hexagonal pieces of small size but very closely and 

 firmly united. The buckler on the crupper is of 

 similar structure, only the stripes of it are slightly 

 concave toward the insertion of the tail, which its 

 posterior margin nearly surrounds. The intermediate 

 bands, which vary in number, as already mentioned, 

 are composed of angular pieces, larger in size and 

 different in shape from those which compose the 

 bucklers. The tail is thick at the root, nearly two 

 inches in diameter, and it tapers gradually to. a point. 

 It is covered with a number of rings, and admits of 

 considerable flexure. The legs are short and the 

 feet smaller than in some of the other species. A 

 considerable quantity of hair covering the under 

 part appears from below the edges of the armour. 



