386 



E D O L I U S. 



alternating drought set in, and the waters subsided 

 While the water was on the surface, and the insects 

 gone, we may suppose that the large animals ol 

 which we have spoken were aloft in the trees, 

 performing the same kind of operation which is now, 

 to a less extent, performed by the sloths, that is, 

 pruning the redundancy of the leaves, so that the 

 trees might ripen their fruits and perfect their seeds. 

 Then, when the rains were over, and the insects had 

 come to maturity in their countless numbers, every 

 tree on which the print of decay was set, and where 

 the leaves had ceased to be succulent, the same 

 animals may have descended to feed upon the 

 spoilers, in order to prevent their dead bodies from 

 being carried to waste by the returning waters. At 

 the present time we have only what may be called 

 partial remnants of this extreme of the working of 

 seasons, but still we have enough to give us at least 

 some insight into what must have been the earlier 

 state of things. 



The second tribe of this singular order of animals 

 comprises two, or rather three genera ; the Arma- 

 dillos, of which an account will be found under the 

 name ARMADILLO ; Oryctopus (digging foot), a 

 singular burrowing animal of Southern Africa, called 

 the earth-hog by the settlers, and sometimes the 

 Aardocrk, or " earth-breaker," from the facility with 

 which it burrows in the ground ; and Myrmecophaga, 

 or the ant-eaters, properly so called, of which some 

 account will be found in the article ANT-EATER. 

 Besides the ant-eaters, properly so called, there is an 

 allied genus, the Pangolins (Manis], which are covered 

 with imbricated scales, shaped like feathers in some 

 of the species, and in all of them bare at their poste- 

 rior edges. These last, from the form of their bodies, 

 have been popularly called scaly lizards, but they 

 are not lizards ; they are true mammalia, only they 

 are very different from the mammalia of what may be 

 called our era of the world, which feed chiefly upon 

 vegetable matters, or animal ones of larger size than 

 the food of this, requiring to kill or crop their food, 

 or, at all events, to divide or bruise it, and which are 

 furnished with teeth adapted to the kind of food upon 

 which they live. 



All the genera of this singular order which we 

 have hitherto enumerated are placental mammalia, 

 bringing forward their young in an internal uterus, until 

 they are completely formed ; so that, if the order 

 were arranged,-as it might certainly be with some 

 advantage to the' system, these would answer to the 

 placenta! mammalia which inhabit the world more 

 generally, are adapted to all its latitudes, and in their 

 various species to all the kinds of food which it 

 requires, and which are the best known, and therefore 

 to us the typical animals, one or other of which 

 naturally occurs to the mind whenever the word 

 mammalia is mentioned. 



The remaining portion of the order, which have so 

 little in common with the portion which has been 

 mentioned, that they might as well be kept separate, 

 are the Monotremata, or those which, like birds, 

 have only one vent. There are but two genera 

 of them, of which some account will be found in the 

 articles ECHIDNA and ORNITHORHYNCHUS. They 

 are marsupial animals, but all their habits are obscure, 

 and nothing is known of the period of advancement 

 at which the young are delivered from the internal 

 uterus, though it has been ascertained that the 

 females have a mammary apparatus for the suckling 



of their young. It is worthy of remark, that all the 

 existing edentata are confined to the southern hemi- 

 sphere, or at least the exceptions are few. 



EDOLIUS (Drongo). A genus of insectivorous 

 birds, which were long, from their colours and other 

 external circumstances, obtained chiefly from stuffed 

 skins, referred not only to different genera, but to differ- 

 ent orders, until Cifvier, from a careful examination of 

 their structure, assigned them their proper place in 

 the Regne Animal. In his arrangement, which, though 

 not, in the nature of things, perfect, as no sagacity can 

 supply the want of facts, is yet by far the best that 

 ever was made, they belong to the dentirostral divi- 

 sion of his great order Passcrcs, and to the fly-catcher 

 family of that division. In that arrangement the 

 dentirostral passeres follow immediately after the 

 birds of prey, the shrike family taking the lead, and 

 the fly-catchers following immediately after. 



It is impossible not to admire this arrangement. 

 The shrikes are actually, to a considerable extent, 

 birds of prey ; that is, they kill and eat birds, though 

 they also eat other animals, as beetles, and the larger 

 flies. The fly-catchers are also birds of prey, killing 

 their own game, instead of living upon garbage, and 

 picking up what they can find. Between them the 

 distinction applies more to the size of the prey than to 

 the habits of the birds ; and if an eagle, which catches 

 a hare a falcon, which strikes down a pigeon an 

 owl, that mouses and a small hawk, which catches 

 beetles in its evening flights are birds of prey, then 

 the same name may, without much impropriety, be 

 given to those birds which catch insects on the wing, 

 which, according to our common notion of things, is 

 a more noble sport than stealing an egg from a nest, 

 or filching a caterpillar out of the curl of a leaf. 



The characters of the genus edolius are : the bill 

 stout, depressed at the base, a little compressed 

 laterally toward the point, and furnished with a notch 

 or tooth ; the upper mandible slightly keeled, arched 

 in the culmen, and hooked at the tip ; the lower 

 mandible straight, but inclining upward at the tip ; 

 the base of the bill furnished with long and strong 

 bristles, directed forwards ; the nostrils, near the base 

 of the bill, lateral, and half closed by a membrane, 

 which is concealed by the bristles ; the feet short and 

 feeble, furnished with four toes, the outer and middle 

 one joined as far as the first articulation, and the hind 

 toe stout, but shorter than the middle one ; the 

 wings of mean length, the first quill very short, the 

 second shorter than the third, and the fourth or fifth, 

 and sometimes the sixth, the longest in the wing; the 

 tail in most of the species forked, rarely even, arid 

 never wedged. 



This genus of birds are all natives of the eastern 

 continent, and they are particularly abundant in 

 India and the Oriental Isles, where they are usually 

 seen near the shores of the sea, or the margins of the 

 broad waters. They are great destroyers of insects, 

 especially of bees, in pursuit of which they are active 

 on the wing during the greater part of the day. 

 They are in general gregarious, appearing in flocks 

 in the morning and toward evening, but they spend 

 the night and the heat of the day in the forests, their 

 notes of salutation, when they leave their shady 

 retreat, being often audible at a very considerable 

 distance. Their cry upon these occasions is a sort of 

 oud scream, in which there is not much music ; but 

 it is said that their love-songs, which they sing when 

 they are apart, have a good deal of melody in tucm, 



