GIANT SLOTHS AND ARMADILLOS. rSi 



afterwards showed, by most clear and convincing reasoning from 

 the skeleton, that the Megatherium could not have been pro- 

 tected as armadillos are, by such a shield (see p. 190). 



And now we come to the question how it obtained its food. 

 The idea of digging round trees with its claws in order to uproot 

 them, must be partly, if not entirely, given up ; for Professor 

 Owen has proved, by a masterly piece of reasoning, that this 

 cumbrous creature, instead of climbing up trees as modem sloths 

 do, actually pulled down the tree bodily, or broke it short off 

 above the ground by a tour deforce, and, in order to do so, sat up 

 on its huge haunches and tail as on a tripod, while it grasped the 

 trunk in its long powerful arms ! Marvellous as this may seem, 

 it can be shown that every detail in its skeleton agrees with the 

 idea. Of course there would be limits to possibilities in this 

 direction, and the larger trees of the period must have been proof 

 against any such Samson-like attempts on the part of the Mega- 

 therium ; but when the trunk was too big, doubtless it pulled 

 down some of the lower branches. Plate XVIII. is a restoration, 

 by our artist, of the South Kensington skeleton. 



Speaking of the extinct sloths of South America, Mr. Darwin 

 thus describes Professor Owen's remarkable discovery: "The 

 habits of these Megatheroid animals were a complete puzzle to 

 naturalists until Professor Owen solved the problem with remark- 

 able ingenuity. Their teeth indicate by their simple structure 

 that these animals . . . lived on vegetable food, and probably 

 on the leaves and small twigs of trees ; their ponderous forms and 

 great strong curved claws seem so little adapted for locomotion, 

 that some eminent naturalists believed that, like sloths, to which 

 they are intimately related, they subsisted by climbing, back 

 downwards, on trees, and feeding on the leaves. It was a bold, 

 not to say preposterous, idea to conceive even antediluvian trees 

 with branches strong enough to bear animals as large as 

 elephants. Professor Owen, with far more probability, believes 

 that, instead of climbing on trees, they pulled the branches down 



