The additional parts of the Megatherium, supplied by Sir Woodbine Parish, and 

 deficient in the skeleton at Madrid, were two of the ossified cartilages of the ribs, 

 two of the smaller bones of the sternum, twelve caudal vertebrae, and ten of the 

 separate ' chevron bones,' partly belonging to them and partly indicating other 

 caudal vertebrae : they also included a part of the os hyoides. Mr. Clift, with his 

 accustomed ingenuity and artistic ability, gives at one view an idea of "all the parts 

 hitherto known, or supposed to be known," of the Megatherium, by taking as his 

 basis the outline of the view of the skeleton given by Pander and D' Alton in the 

 first plate of their work ; leaving in simple outline those parts which are present in 

 the Madrid skeleton, but not in Sir Woodbine Parish's collection ; expressing by a 

 pale tint the parts in that collection which also exist in the Madrid skeleton; and 

 indicating by a dark tint the additional parts which are deficient in the Madrid 

 skeleton, and had not before been figured. 



Besides the important elements thus added towards the completion of our know- 

 ledge of the skeleton, Mr. Clift was enabled to correct an error into which Cuvier 

 bad been led by a figure of a mutilated tooth in tab. 4. fig. 5, f, of Garriga's memoir, 

 which seemed to show that it had been implanted, as Cuvier describes it to have 

 been, by two fangs. Pander and D'Alton give a similar figure of one of the teeth 

 in their tab. 2. fig. 15. The figure of the natural size of one of the teeth of the Me- 

 gatherium transmitted by Sir Woodbine Parish, given in the third plate (pi. 45. fig. 2.) 

 of Mr. Clift's memoir, is the first accurate representation of these characteristic parts, 

 and shows that the implanted base is widely excavated for a persistent matrix, as in 

 the Sloths and Armadillos. 



The prevalent belief among Comparative Anatomists and Naturalists at this 

 period, founded upon the additional observations by Weiss and Clift to those con- 

 tained in the second edition of the ' Ossemens Fossiles ' of Cuvier, may be gathered 

 from such notices as were then published of the opinions expressed by the eminent 

 professors of those sciences on the subject. Thus Dr. Robert Grant, treating of the 

 Armadillos, in his Lectures on Comparative Anatomy, says, "The Megatherium itself 

 appears to have been such a digging loricated animal, and in many of its bones 

 resembles the Armadillos *." 



The Very Rev. Dr. Buckland, in his Bridgewater Treatise published in 1836, ad- 

 mitting the probability, from the evidence at that time adduced, that the Megathe- 

 rium had been defended by a bony tessellated armour, argues that — "A covering of 



* Lecture, reported in the ' Lancet,' March 29, 1834 : and again, in 1839, the Megatherium is described by 

 Dr. Grant as being " allied in structure to the Bradypus, and shielded with cutaneous plates like the Dasypus." 

 — Thomson's 'British Annual' for 1839, p. 274. M. Desmarest, in the art. MegatMre of the ' Dictionnaire 

 des Sciences Naturelles,' 1823, writes asfollows : — " Leurs membres etaient robustes et terminer par cinq gros 

 doigts. Des observations recentes paroissent prouver que sa peau, epaissee et comme ossifiee, etait partagee 

 en une foule d'ecussons polygones et rapproch^s les uns des autres comme les pieces qui entrent dans la com- 

 position d'une mosaique." — " La forme des molaires et la taille de ces animaux semblent indiquer qu'ils se 

 nourrissoient de vegetaux et sans doute de racines." 



