RODENTIA. 159 
is about the size of a small Rabbit ; is covered with long, close and 
fine hair, the softest that is known among common furs. The ears 
are large and half naked ; the tail, one-third the length of the body, 
is furnished with stiffer hairs, so arranged as to give it the appear- 
ance of being laterally compressed. The fore feet have four toes 
with a vestige of a thumb; the hinder ones have only three. This 
quadruped inhabits the mountains of South America. 
The Viscache, as described by Azzara (Quadr. du Parag., Tr. Fr. 
II, p. 41), and such as we have seen it figured, can hardly be any 
other than a large species of Chinchilla, with shorter and coarser 
fur.(1) 
ORDER VI. 
EDENTATA 
The Edentata, or quadrupeds without front teeth, will 
form our last order of unguiculated animals. Although united 
by a character purely negative, they have, nevertheless, some 
positive mutual relations, and particularly large nails, which 
embrace the extremities of the toes, approaching more or less 
to the nature of hoofs: a slowness, a want of agility, obviously 
arising from the peculiar organization of their limbs. There 
are, however, certain intervals in these relations, which ren” 
der it necessary to divide the order into three tribes. ‘The 
first of these is the 
TARDIGRADA. 
They have a short face. Their name originates from their 
excessive slowness, the consequence of a‘ construction ,truly 
“heteroclite, in which nature seems to have amused herself by 
producing something imperfect and grotesque. The only 
genus now in existence | S10 ee an 
th ™ 
¥ 
: (4) The figures were communicated to us by M. Hiinifteh Smith and M, Brookes. 
It is the animal described under the name of Gerboise géanie, by De Blainville, in 
Désmarets’ Mammal., 315, and Nouy. Dict. d’Hist. Nat. XIN, 117, and figured in 
Griffith’s ed. of the present work, under that of Marmot Diana. 
