THE GREAT ARMADILLO. 



183 



GREAT ARMADILLO. 



the arch is complete. In the face the intermaxillary bone is well developed, and there is often a 

 crest of bone passing over the top of the skull from side to side over the occiput, which is in relation 

 to the head armour. The brain is small ; the back or little brain is not covered by the brain proper, 

 whose convolutions and processes are few and simple. The olfactory lobes project. 



These armoured, round-bodied, short-legged, great-clawed animals are 

 mimerous, and there are several species, which need not, however, be collected 

 into more than two genera. But it is by no means easy to arrange those of 

 the first genus the True Armadillos, genus Dasypus in any other than an 

 arbitrary and very artificial classification. Usually they are grouped and sepa- 

 rated by the relative number of digits or claws on the fore and hinder extremi- 

 ties ; by the presence or absence of teeth in the intermaxillary bones ; by their 

 ability to roll up ; and by the excessive or the small number of their teeth. The 

 method of walking, whether on the sole or on the tips of the claws, and the 

 number of the bands, have been partly employed in classification, but their 

 number is often variable in individuals of the same species. 



The Priodontes have but one species, which is readily distinguished by its 

 superior size, besides by its great number of teeth, of which there are from 

 twenty-two to twenty-four small ones on each jaw on each side, making from 

 eighty- eight to ninety-six in all. 



THE GREAT ARMADILLO.* 



This is an inhabitant of Brazil, and of the northern parts of Paraguay and of Surinam, and is 

 a dweller in the forest, being never found far out on the plains. The head is seven inches and a half 

 long, and the ears, usually pointed and laid backwards, are not quite two inches in length. The head 

 and body, without the tail, measure three feet and some inches, whilst the thickly-rooted but rapidly- 



* Dasypus gigas (Cuvier). 



BRAIN OF THE 

 ARMADILLO. 



