6 



modification : the following paragraph is added to the summary on this head given in 

 flu- earlier edition of the great work: — "Its analogies approximate it to different 

 genera of the Edentate family. It has the head and the shoulder of a Sloth, whilst 

 the legs and the feet offer a singular mixture of characters peculiar to the Anteaters 

 and Armadillos*." Cuvier concludes his account of the Megatherium in the second 

 edition of the 'Ossemens Fossiles,' by appending a note communicated to him by 

 M. Augusts St. Hilaike, " which announces," he says, " that the Megatherium had 

 pushed its affinity to the Armadillos so far as to be covered like them with a scaly 

 cuirass." 



This opinion derived apparent confirmation from the description by Professor Weiss 

 of portions of an osseous tessellated dermal armour of some gigantic quadruped, sent 

 to Berlin by the traveller Sellow, which armour he figures, and attributes to the 

 Megatherium, in a " Geological memoir on the Provinces of S. Pedro do Sal and the 

 Banda Oriental," published in 1827 -J-- 



In the year 1832, a highly valuable and important collection of the bones of the 

 Megatherium, discovered in the Rio Salado, with a portion of a bony tessellated 

 dermal covering of an animal, found in Lake Averias, province of Buenos Ayres, 

 indicative of a frame as great as that of the skeleton from the Rio Salado, was 

 transmitted from Buenos Ayres by Sir Woodbine Parish, K.H., and presented by 

 him to the Royal College of Surgeons. These specimens formed the subject of a 

 memoir communicated by William Clift, Esq., F.R.S., to the Geological Society, 

 June 13, 1832J, in which, although, with the characteristic caution of the author, the 

 armour is not directly affirmed to belong to the Megatherium, nothing is stated to 

 prevent the inference that it formed part of the ' Remains' of that animal which it is 

 the object of the memoir to describe : and, in the description of the map engraved in 

 pi. 43, the specimen figured in pi. 46, with other portions of the bony armour, are 

 comprehended amongst " those Remains of the Megatherium which have hitherto 

 been sent to Europe §." Further countenance to the later opinion of Cuvier as to 

 the affinities of the Megatherium to the Armadillo, was afforded by a few remarks in 

 the text of Mr. Clift's memoir : thus, in noticing the " bony or pseudo-cartilaginous 

 pieces which unite the true ribs to the sternum," Mr. Clift adds, " as is also 

 the case in the Armadillo ||." And in the description of the caudal vertebrae, he 

 remarks, " they have the inferior spines (/'. e. the chevron or V-shaped bones), mani- 

 festing in this their relation to other Edentata, as the Myrmecophagce and Dasy- 



* " Ses analogies le rapprochent des divers genres de la famille des ententes. II a la tete et l'cpaule d'un 

 paretseux, et ses jambes et ses pieds offrent un singulier melange de earacteres propres aux fourmilliers et aux 

 tatous."— lb. p. 189. 



t Abhandlungen der Kon. Akad. der Wissenschaften zu Berlin, 1827. 



I Geological Transactions, 2nd series, vol. ill. p. 437. 



i Ibid. Description of the Plates. || Ibid. p. 439. f Ibid. p. 444. 



