3fi8 HlffiOUY OF 



is about ten inches long, and the tail seven. The fourth is the 

 PIG-HEADED ARMADILLO, with nine bands. This is much larger 

 than the former, being about two feet long from the nose to the 

 tail. The fifth is the kabassou, or cataphractus, with twelve 

 bands, and still bigger than the former, or any other of its kind. 

 This is often found above three feet long ; but is never eaten as 

 the rest are. The sixth is the weasel-headed armadillo* 

 with eighteen bands, with a large piece before, and nothing but 

 bands backward. This is above a foot long, and the tail five 

 inches. Of all these, the kabassou and the encoubert are the 

 largest; the rest are of a much smaller kind. In the larger 

 kinds, the shell is much more solid than in the others, and the 

 flesh is much harder and unfit for the table. These are gene- 

 rally seen to reside in dry upland grounds, while the small pieces 

 are always found in moist places, and in the neighbourhood of 

 brooks and rivers. They all roll themselves into a ball ; but those 

 whose bands are fewest in number, are least capable of covering 

 themselves up completely. The tatu apara, for instance, when 

 rolled up, presents two great interstices between its bands, by which 

 it is very easily vulnerable, even by the feeblest of quadrupeds 



CHAP. IV. 



animals of the bat kind. 



Having in the last chapter desciibed a race of animals that unite 

 the boundaries between quadrupeds and insects, I come in this to a 

 very different class, that serve to fill up the chasm between quad- 

 rupeds and birds. Some naturalists, indeed, have found animals 

 of the bat kind so much partaking of the nature of both, that they have 

 been at a loss in which i-ank to place them, and have doubted, in 

 giving the history of the bat, whether it was a beast or a bird 

 they were describing. These doubts, however, no longer exist ; 

 they are now universally made to take their place among quad- 

 rupeds, to which their bringing forth their young alive, their 

 hair, their teeth, as well as the rest of their habitudes and con- 

 formation, evidently entitle them. Pliny, Gesner, and Aldro- 

 vandus, who placed them among birds, did not consider that 

 they wanted every character of that order of animals, exce])t 



