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CHAPTER XLIV. 



THE ANT-EATEKS OF THE NEW AND THE OLD WORLD. 



The Groat 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 Orycteropi — The Armadillos — The 

 Glyptodon — The Porcupine Ant-Eater of Australia — The Myrmecobius Fas- 

 ciatus. 



rpHE great Ant-bear is undoubtedly one of the most extraor- 

 JL 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 exclu- 

 sively on ants, seems scarcely less remark- 

 able than that the whale nourishes his 

 enormous body with minute pteropods 

 and medusae. 



The vast mouth of the leviathan of the 

 seas has been most admirably adapted to 

 his peculiar food, and it was not m 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 thou- 

 sands of his tiny prey might remain entangled ; but the ant-bear 

 has been no less wonderfully armed for the capture of the minute 

 animals on which he feeds, and if, on considering the use for 

 which it was ordained, we become reconciled to the seeming 

 disproportion of the whale's jaws, the small and elongated, 

 snout-like head of the ant-bear will also appear less uncouthly 

 formed when we reflect that it is in exact accordance with the 

 wants of the animal. For here no deep cavity was required for 

 the reception of two rows of powerful teeth, as in most other 



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