DILUVIUM. DRIFT AND ERRATIC BLOCKS. 757 



Academy of the vale of the Arno, such an abundance of the remains of the hippopotamus 

 that he had little difficulty in recomposing a skeleton. They had been obtained from the 

 sand hills at the base of the mountains which nearly shut in that beautiful valley, where 

 also the elephantine remains are so common, with relics of several other departed animal 

 races. He removed a considerable quantity to Paris, purchased from the peasants ; and 

 in 1816 an almost entire skeleton was found, now in the cabinet of the Grand Duke. 

 The Hippopotamus major of Cuvier resembles the present African species so much that 

 an attentive comparison is required to distinguish them. 



Megatherium. This leviathan of the vast plains of South America, which were once 

 occupied by immense numbers of the race now entirely extinct, partakes of the generic 

 character of the existing diminutive sloths. It rivalled in size the largest rhinoceros, 

 was armed with claws of enormous length and power, its whole frame possessing an 

 extreme degree of solidity. With a head and neck like those of the sloth, its legs and 

 feet exhibit the character of the armadillo and the ant-eater. Some specimens of the 

 animal give the measurement of five feet across the haunches, and the thigh bone was 

 nearly three times as thick as that of the elephant. The spinal marrow must have been 

 a foot in diameter, and the tail, at the part nearest the body, twice as large, or six feet 

 in circumference. The girth of the body was fourteen feet and a half, and the length 

 eighteen feet. The teeth were admirably adapted for cutting vegetable substances, and 

 the general structure and strength of the frame for tearing up the ground in search 

 of roots, wrenching off the branches of trees, and uprooting their trunks, on which 

 it principally fed. " Heavily constructed, and ponderously accoutred," says Dr. Buckland, 

 in his eloquent description of the megatherium, ' it could neither run, nor leap, nor 

 climb, nor burrow under the ground ; and all its movements must have been necessarily 

 slow. But what need of rapid locomotion to an animal whose occupation, of digging 

 roots for food, was almost stationary ? And what need of speed, for flight from foes, 

 to a creature whose giant carcase was encased in an impenetrable cuirass, and who, 

 by a single pat of his paw, or lash of his tail, could in an instant have demolished 

 the couguar or the crocodile ? Secure within the panoply of his strong armour, where was 

 the enemy that would dare encounter this leviathan of the Pampas ? or in what more 

 powerful creature can we find the cause that has effected the extirpation of his race ? 

 His entire frame was an apparatus of colossal mechanism, adapted exactly to the work 

 it had to do. Strong and ponderous in proportion as this work was heavy, and calculated 

 to be the vehicle of life and enjoyment to a gigantic race of quadrupeds, which, though 

 they have ceased to be counted among the living inhabitants of our planet, have in their 

 fossil bones left behind them imperishable monuments of the consummate skill with 

 which they were constructed." Since this passage was written, it has been shown by 

 Professor Owen that the megatherium was not encased with a bony armour, like the 

 armadillo, as is here assumed, and that the tessellated shell or case, found in one instance 

 with some remains, which led to the surmise, belonged to another contemporaneous 

 extinct animal, nearly as colossal, which he has called the Glyptodon, discovered near 

 Monte Video, by Sir Woodbine Parish. 



The megatherium is peculiar to America, and has been chiefly found in the southern 

 part of the continent, though bones of the animal have been obtained from the island 

 of Skiddaway on the coast of Georgia. The first skeleton, almost entire, was discovered 

 in excavations made on the banks of the river Luxan, not far from Buenos Ayres, at 

 the depth of a hundred feet. It was sent to Spain by the viceroy, the Marquis of 

 Loreto, in the year 1785, and placed in the royal cabinet at Madrid. A second arrived 

 from Lima in 1795, and a third was found in Paraguay, from which locality it obtained 

 the name of "the animal of Paraguay." More recently Sir Woodbine Parish pro- 



