SCENES OF ANCIENT DAYS. 291 



acting upon its bony attachments with the force of a hundred 

 giants. Extraordinary must be the strength and proportions 

 of the tree if, when rocked to and fro to light and left in such 

 an embrace, it can long withstand the efforts of its assailant. 

 It yields ! The roots fly up. The earth is scattered wide 

 upon the surrounding foliage. The tree comes down with a 

 thundering crash, cracking and snapping the great boughs like 

 grass. The frightened insects swarm out at every orifice, but 

 the huge beast is in upon them. With his sharp hoofs he 

 tears apart the crusty walls of the earth-nests, and licks out 

 their living contents — fat pupse, eggs, and all — rolling down 

 the sweet morsels, half sucking, half chewing, with a delighted 

 gusto that repays him for all his mighty toil. AVhile this 

 giant is absorbed in his juicy breakfast, see ! there lounges 

 along his neighbour the macrauchen — equally massive, equally 

 heavy, equally vast, equally peaceful. The stranger resembles 

 the huge rhinoceros, elevated on much loftier limbs. But his 

 most remarkable feature is the enormously long neck, Uke 

 that of the camel, but carried to the altitude of that of the 

 giraffe. Thus he thrusts his great muzzle into the very centre 

 of the leafy trees, and gathering with his prehensile and 

 flexible lip the succulent twigs and foliage, he too finds abun- 

 dance of food for his immense body in the teeming vegetation 

 without intruding on the supply of his fellows." * 



Emerging from the water appears a great head, with little 

 piggish eyes set wide apart, with immense muzzle and lips, 

 and broad cheeks armed with stiff projecting bristles — the 

 sluggish toxodon. The creature opens its cavernous mouth to 

 seize a floating gourd ; and now it tears up the great fleshy 

 arum roots from the clay bank, and grinding them to pul[), 



* Owen on tlie " Mylodon " 



