270 TYPES OF ANIMAL LIFE 



the outer sides of its hands and feet, and so the claws 

 were not in contact with the ground, and thus could be 

 kept sharp. Its teeth w^ere essentially like those of the 

 sloths, but rather more complicated, so that it probably 

 ground up and devoured the smaller branches of trees, as 

 well as their leaves and tender shoots. Another some- 

 what smaller South American beast, now extinct, is 

 known as the Mylodon, of which there were a number of 

 large varieties, while the remains of allied creatures have 

 also been discovered in America, and are known as the 

 Scelidotherium Megalonyx and the Nothrotherium, and 

 these were all intermediate in structure between the 

 existing sloths and ant-eaters, having the head and teeth 

 of the former, with the trunk, and, in some respects, the 

 limbs of the latter. Much speculation has taken place, 

 as to how such huge creatures as the megatherium and 

 mylodon could have succeeded in browsing on the leaves 

 of trees, which, one would think, must have been com- 

 pletely out of their reach. It was at one time thought 

 by some persons that they, like the sloths, actually 

 climbed trees, and lived in the branches, and the sugges- 

 tion was made, that, in their day, trees gigantic enough 

 to have been in proportion to their size, might have 

 existed. But there is no need for so wild an hypo- 

 thesis, in favour of which no fragment of evidence 

 exists. Doubtless their bulk enabled them to reach the 

 lower branches of many trees, when the fore part of the 

 body was raised and supported on the massive hind 

 quarters. Then their great hook-like claws, at the end 

 of their rather long and more or less prehensile fore- 

 limbs, were no doubt very eiiicient organs for tearing 

 down branches and cutting or breaking off smaller por- 

 tions. But Sir Richard Owen has suggested yet another 

 mode by which they might have obtained their leafy 



