MEGATHERIUM. 129 



Conclusion. 



We have now examined in detail the skeleton of an ex- 

 tinct quadruped of enormous magnitude ; every bone of 

 w^hich presents peculiarities, that at first sight appear im- 

 perfectly contrived, but which become intelligible whea 

 viewed in their relations to one another, and to the func- 

 tions of the animal in which they occur. 



The size of the Megatherium exceeds that of the existing, 

 Edentata, to which it is most nearly allied, in a greater de- 

 gree than any other fossil animal exceeds its nearest living 

 congeners. With the head and shoulders of a Sloth, it 

 combined in its legs and feet, an admixture of the charac- 

 ters of the Ant-eater, the Armadillo, and the Chlamyphorus ; 

 it probably also still farther resembled the Armadillo and 

 Chlamyphorus, in being cased with a bony coat of armour. 

 Its haunches were more than five feet wide, and its body 

 twelve feet long and eight feet high ; its feet were a yard in 

 length, and terminated by most gigantic claws; its tail was 

 probably clad in armour, and much larger than the tail of 

 any other beast, among extinct or living terrestrial Mam- 

 malia. Thus heavily constructed, and ponderously accou- 

 tred, it could neither run, nor leap, nor climb, nor burrow 

 under the ground, and in all its movements must have been 

 necessarily sIoav ; 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 carcass was encased in an 

 inpenetrable cuirass, and who by a single pat of his paw, 



the same dry and sandy plains, which were once inhabited by the Mega- 

 therium, and the Chlamyphorus lives almost entirely in burrows beneath 

 the surface of the same sandy regions ; they both probably receive from 

 their cuirass the same protection to the upper parts of their bodies from 

 sand and dust, which we suppose to have been afforded by its cuirass to 

 the Megatherium. The Pangolins are covered with a different kind of 

 armour, composed of horny moveable scales, in which tliere is no bony 

 matter. 



