GIANT SLOTHS AND ARMADILLOS. 191 



of mail. Their only enemies seem to be the monkeys, and one 

 of the tricks of the young monkeys in the American forests is, 

 when they find an armadillo away from home, to pull its tail 

 unmercifully, and try to drag it about. Snakes cannot hurt them. 

 Mr. Hudson, in his most interesting book, A Naturalist in La 

 Plata, narrates how he watched an armadillo kill a snake and 

 then devour it. 



If we examine the anatomy of the armadillo, we shall find that 

 its bones greatly resemble those of the sloth, but still there are a 

 few differences. It is a burrowing animal, and therefore requires 

 great power of scratching and tearing the ground. Why the 

 colossal forms of armadillo should have become extinct and only 

 small ones survived to the present time, is one of the many and 

 perplexing problems presented by the study of extinct animals. 

 One would have thought from its size and strength that the 

 Glyptodon had been built, like Rome, for eternity. 



