ORDER EDENTATA; GENERAL CHARACTERS. 271 



state as to lead to the belief, that they were brought together 

 by Owls. Remains of Mice and Water-Rats have been found 

 in the Kirkdale Cave in Yorkshire. 



ORDER VIII. EDENTATA. 



239. This order contains a number of animals, recent and 

 fossil, which differ from each other most widely in habits, and in 

 those points of their structure which especially adapt them to 

 those habits ; and which yet agree in so many essential charac- 

 ters, and are connected together by so many intermediate links, 

 as evidently to require being associated in the same group. The 

 leaf-eating, tree-inhabiting Sloths, at present existing in South 

 America, the gigantic Mylodon and Megatherium, which 

 formerly inhabited that Continent, and gained their subsistence, 

 not by climbing the trees that afforded it, but by uprooting them 

 with their immense digging feet, the armour-clothed, insectivo- 

 rous Armadillos, also inhabiting South America, the hairy, 

 toothless Ant-Eaters of the same Continent, and the scaly 

 Pangolins of Southern Africa, might almost be regarded as 

 types of distinct groups, so widely do they differ from each other 

 in external form and covering. The name given to the order is 

 very liable to mislead ; for it might be inferred from it, that the 

 animals composing the group are altogether toothless, which is 

 the case in regard to a small section of it only. They all agree, 

 however, in the absence of teeth in the front of the jaws ; and 

 the molar teeth, in those which possess them, are comparatively 

 imperfect in their structure, being destitute of enamel and of 

 distinct roots. The Edentata constitute the last group of Vn- 

 guiculated animals ; and in the diminution of the number of 

 toes which some of them present, as well as in the complete 

 enclosure of these in a large hoof-like nail, there is an obvious 

 tendency towards the ungulated structure, which is fully deve- 

 loped in the succeeding orders. The existing species of this order 

 may be subdivided into two principal groups, according to the 

 nature of the food on which they respectively subsist ; the first, 



