OF CREATION. 



357 



that its nearest analogies are with the extinct genus 

 Palaotherium, but it also indicates a very beautiful 

 transition from the pachyderms to the ruminants, 

 through the singular group of which the camels and 

 the llama are the existing representatives. A true 

 anoplotheroid animal has recently been added to the 

 list of South American pachyderms. 



We now come to the consideration of those ani- 

 mals more especially characteristic of the later ter- 

 tiary period on the continent of South America, a 

 group of animals perhaps the most remarkable of any 

 that has yet been determined, and one which exhibits 

 a perfect and beautiful adaptation of closely analogous 

 structure in the case of species varying in bulk al- 

 most as much as it is possible for those of analogous 

 structure to do. All the rest of the quadrupeds that 

 I shall have to describe belong to the same natural 

 order, which includes, with few exceptions, the great 

 majority of those fossils hitherto obtained from South 

 America. The order, as I have already stated, is 

 called Edentata, and is now characterised by the 

 sloth, the armadillo, and the ant-eater. Of the ex- 

 isting species of these animals, the largest is the great 

 ant-eater, which equals in length a Newfoundland 

 dog: of the others, the gigantic armadillo attains 

 about two-thirds of that bulk; and the sloth never ex- 

 ceeds two feet in the length of the body, although its 

 fore extremities are disproportionately long. At the 

 time immediately preceding the last change that took 

 place upon the earth, South America was, however, 

 inhabited by numerous animals of this order, some 

 of them rivalling in bulk the largest pachyderms, and 

 others quite as remarkable for their structure, their 



