/ .''\ 



IXDIAN PAXGOLIN. 



CHAPTER XXXVIII. 



ANT-EATERS. 



The Great Ant-Bear — His Way of Licking up Termites — His Formidable Weapons 

 — A Perfect Forest Vagabond — His Peculiar Manner of Walking — The Smaller 

 Ant-Eaters — The Manides — The African Aard Vark — The Armadillos — The 

 Porcupine Ant-Eater of Australia. 



THE great Ant-bear is imdoubtedly one of the most extraor- 

 dinary denizens of the wilds of South America, for that a 

 powerful animal, measuring above six feet from the snout to 

 the end of the tail, should live exclusively on ants, seems 

 scarcely less remarkable than that the whale nourislies his enor- 

 mous body with minute pteropods and medusse. The vast 

 mouth of the leviathan of the seas has been most admirably 

 adapted to his peculiar food, and it was not in vain that Nature 

 gave such colossal dimensions to his head, as it was necessary 

 to find room for a gigantic straining apparatus, in which, on 

 rejecting the engulphed water, thousands upon thousands of 



