EDENTATA. 167 
with large trenchant scales arranged like tiles, which they elevate 
in rolling themselves into a ball, when they wish to defend them- 
selves from an enemy. There are five toes to each foot. Their 
stomach is slightly divided in the middle, and there is no cecum. 
They are confined to the eastern continent. 
M. pentadactyla, L.; M. brachyura, Erxl.; Buff. X, xxxiv. 
(The Short-tailed Pangolin.) Three or four feet long ; the tail 
shorter than the body. From the East Indies. It is the Phat- 
tagen of Mlian, lib. xvi, cap. vi. 
M. tetradactyla, L.; M. macroura, Erxl.; Phatagin, Buff. X, 
xxxiv. (The Long-tailed Pangolin.) Three or four feet in 
length; the tail double that of the body, and the scales armed 
with points. From Senegal, Guinea, &c.(1) 
The third tribe of the Edentata comprehends those animals, 
designated by M. Geoffroy, under the name of 
MONOTREMATA. 
So called, because they have only one external opening for 
the seminal fluid, urine and other excrements. Their organs 
of generation present extraordinary anomalies; for though they 
have no pouch under the belly, their pubis is furnished with 
the same supernumerary bones as the Marsupialia; the vasa 
deferentia terminate in the urethra which opens into the 
cloaca; the penis, when at rest, is drawn into a sheath, which 
opens by a hole near the bottom of the cloaca. The only 
matrix consists of two canals or trunks, each of which opens 
separately and by a double orifice into the urethra, which is 
very large and terminates in the cloaca. As naturalists have 
not yet agreed as to the existence of their mamme;(2) 
whether they are oviparous or viviparous remains to be 
ascertained.(3) The singularities of their skeleton are not 
(1) We have verified the habitat of the Long-tailed Pangolin, by the statement 
of M. Adanson and other travellers. 
(2) M. Meckel considers as such two glandular masses he found greatly de- 
veloped in a female Ornithorhynchus. M. Geoffroy thinks they are rather glands, 
analogous to those on the flanks of the Shrews. 
(3) Travellers have lately asserted, that it has been ascertained that these ani- 
mals produce eggs. Should this prove to be the case, the Monotremata must, in 
some sort, be considered as a separate class of animals; but it is to be wished that 
some able anatomist would exactly describe these eggs, their internal origin, and 
their development after being produced. We must expect it from some one 
