Professor Owen on the Megatherium. 95 
middle digit, that the fore foot of the Megatherium was occa- 
sionally applied by the short and strong fore limb in the act of 
digging ; but its analogy to that of the ant-eaters teaches that the 
fossorial actions were limited to the removal of the surface soil, 
in order to expose something there concealed; and not for the 
purpose of burrowing. Such an instrument would be equally 
effective in the disturbance of roots and ants; it is, however, 
still better adapted for grasping than for delving. But to what- 
ever task the partly unguiculate hand of the Megatherium might 
have been applied, the bones of the wrist, fore-arm, arm an 
shoulder, attest the prodigious force which would be brought to 
eat Upon its execution. The general organization of the ante- 
rlor extremity of the Megatherium is incompatible with its being 
a strictly scansorial or exclusively fossorial animal, and its teeth 
and jaws decidedly negative the idea of its having fed upon in- 
gs are 
much shorter than the fore legs, and even in those Quadrumana 
in which the prehensile tail is superadded to the sacrum, the pel- 
vis 1s not remarkable for its size or the expansion of the iliac 
bones. But in the megatherium the extraordinary size and mas- 
Sivé proportions of the pelvis and hind limbs arrest the attention 
of the least curious beholder, and become eminently suggestive 
to the physiologist of the peculiar powers and actions of the ani- 
mal. Th rmous pelvis was the centre whence muscular 
Masses of unwonted force diverged to act upon the trank, the tail, 
and the hind legs, and also by the “ latissimus dorsi” on the fore 
limbs, The fore foot being adapted for scratching as well as for 
stasping, may have been employed in removing the earth from 
of the hind legs are as extraordinarily developed, and the strong 
= Powerful tail must have concurred with the two hind yeas 
