EXTINCT QUADRUPEDS. 107 



The teeth indicate, by their simple structure, that 

 these Megatheroid animals lived on vegetable food, 

 and probably on the leaves and small twigs of 

 trees ; their ponderous forms, and gi-eat, strong- 

 curved claws seem so little adapted for locomotion, 

 that some eminent naturalists have actually be- 

 lieved that, like the sloths, to which they are inti- 

 mately related, they subsisted by climbing back 

 downwards on trees, and feeding on the leaves. It 

 was a bold, not to say preposterous, idea to con- 

 ceive even antediluvian trees with branches strong 

 enough to bear animals as large as elephants. Pro- 

 fessor Owen, with far more probability, believes 

 that, instead of climbing on the trees, they pulled 

 the branches down to them, and tore up the small- 

 er ones by the roots, and so fed on the leaves. 

 The colossal breadth and weight of their hinder 

 quarters, which can hardly be iinagined without 

 having been seen, become, on this view, of obvious 

 service, instead of being an incumbrance : their ap- 

 parent clumsiness disappears. With their great 

 tails and their huge heels firmly fixed like a tripod 

 on the ground, they could freely exert the full force 

 of their most powerful arms and great claws. 

 Strongly I'ooted, indeed, must that tree have been 

 which could have resisted such force ! The My- 

 lodon, moreover, was furnished with a long exten- 

 sile tongue like that of the giraffe, which, by one 

 of those beautiful provisions of nature, thus reaches, 

 with the aid of its long neck, its leafy food. I may 

 remark, that in Abyssinia the elephant, according 

 to Bruce, when it cannot reach with its proboscis 

 the branches, deeply scores with its tusks the trunk 

 of the tree, up and down and all around, till it is 

 sufficiently weakened to be broken down. 



The beds including the above fossil remains 

 stand only from fifteen to twenty feet above the 



