82 Dr. Burmeister on the Species of Glyptodon 



up to the present time is unique in the museums of the civilized 

 world. Senor Don David Lanato having presented this precious 

 specimen to the Public Museum, I set it up myself, during the 

 first months of my direction (1860), with the assistance of some 

 friends and skilled workmen, who helped me in the steel- and 

 iron-work, I myself superintending their manual labour. To 

 clearly explain the parts of this antediluvian animal which are 

 new to science, and those which are already known, I must give 

 some historical notices of previous publications on the same 

 subject. 



The first notice of this animal will be met with in the work of 

 the celebrated Cuvier*, in which that author states, in a note, 

 that Senor Damaso Larraiiaga, of Montevideo, discovered in 

 Banda Oriental the shell of a gigantic animal, which probably 

 belonged to Megatherium. The Prussian traveller Sellow was 

 the first who (in the year 1825) sent specimens of this shell to 

 Europe, where they were described by the celebrated mineralo- 

 gist Weiss, in the Transactions of the Berlin Academy for 1827, 

 without a knowledge of the zoological affinities of the animal to 

 which they belonged, the author being, however, disposed to 

 regard them as the armour of Megatherium — an opinion which, 

 some years after, was directly accepted and published by the 

 Enghsh author Cliftf. Buckland, in his ' Geology' J, expressed 

 the same opinion. With the specimens of the shell which were 

 then obtained, some parts of the skeleton were also sent to 

 Berlin, and, with those which were examined by my friend and 

 colleague in the University of Halle, Dr. D' Alton, this celebrated 

 anatomist pubhshed, in the Transactions of the Berlin Academy 

 for 1833, the description of the incomplete forearm and some 

 foot-bones of this . animal, he calculating that it bore an affinity 

 to the Armadillo, but that, until the entire form was discovered, 

 it would be futile to assign to it a specific name. The celebrated 

 English anatomist Owen coincided in this judgment, five years 

 after, when he described the shell and some portions of the 

 skeleton which had been recently sent to London by Charles 

 Darwin and by the English Minister in Buenos Ayres, Sir 

 Woodbine Parish §, and gave to it the new name of Glyptodon 

 clavipes, derived from the carved [or fluted] form of the teeth 

 and the thick form of the feet. To the description of these 

 parts the author has made several additions in his work on the 

 fossil bones in the collection of the College of Surgeons of Lon- 



j * ^''lierches sur les Ossemens Fossiles, &c., vol. v. part 1. p. 191, ed. 



t Notice on the Megatherium, Trans. Geol. Soc. 1835. 



I Bndgewater Treatise. 8vo, London, 1837. 



§ Trans. Geol. Soc. vol. vi. p. 81 ; Zoology of the Beagle, vol. i. 



