ADDRESS. Ixxxvii 
family. But such retrospective views of life in remote periods in many im- 
portant instances confirm the zoologist’s deductions of the originally re- 
stricted range of particular forms of mammalian life. This is the case with 
respect to that singular group of quadrupeds forming the Order Bruta, Linn., 
or Epentata, Cuv. If a zoological province be defined by the proportion 
of genera and species peculiar to it, South America must be assigned as such 
province for the Bruta; three out of five of the genera, and a much larger 
proportion of the species, being peculiar to that continent. The Sloths 
(Bradypus), the Anteaters (Myrmecophaga), and the Armadillos (Dasypus), 
are the South American genera, or rather families, of Bruéa referred to. The 
scaly Anteaters or Pangolins (Manis) are represented by long-tailed species 
in Africa, and shorter-tailed ones in Asia. The Orycteropus is represented 
by a single species in South Africa. 
Fossil remains of the order Bruta have been discovered in tertiary beds in 
Europe and in America. ‘The European fossil was a large Pangolin, and the 
discovery shows the natural extent of that province, now imperfectly divided 
jnto Europe, Asia, and Africa, to which the Manis-form of Bruta is and has 
been peculiar. 
Geology also extends the geographical range of the Sloths and Armadillos 
from South to North America; but the deductions from recent rich discoveries 
of huge terrestrial forms of Sloth, of gigantic Armadillos, and large Anteaters, 
go to establish the fact that these peculiar families of the order Bruta have 
ever been, as they are now, peculiar to America; that several genera, in- 
cluding the largest species, have perished; and that the range of their still 
existing diminutive representatives has been reduced to the southern division 
of the ‘ New World.’ 
In no other region of the globe than America—that to which the Sloths, 
Anteaters, and Armadillos are now peculiar—has any fossil relic of an animal 
of those families been found: and if it be objected to this evidence of the 
primeval limitation of those families to America, that it is chiefly ‘ negative,’ I 
would remark, that bones of the Megatherium are as likely to catch the eye 
as those of the Elephant; and would ask, if Megatherioids had co-existed with 
Elephants in other continents, as Elephants did with them in America, why 
have not their remains been found elsewhere? The positive and abundant 
evidence, however, of the remains of gigantic Sloths and Armadillos in South 
America is most conclusive of the original location of these unmigratory 
beasts in the New World. 
Australia, which in extent of dry land merits to be regarded as a fifth con- 
tinent, has a more restricted and peculiar character of aboriginal mammalian 
population than South America. It is emphatically the ‘ province’ of those 
quadrupeds the females of which are provided with a pouch for the trans- 
port and protection of their prematurely born young. 
One genus of Marsupialia (Didelphys or Opossums, properly so called) is 
peculiar to America, and is there the sole representative of the order. A 
