blance to the skeletons of the existing species of Sloth, of which they append excel- 

 lent figures. But, imbued with the principles of the transcendental and transmuta- 

 tive hypotheses, then prevalent in the schools of Germany, they regard the great Mega- 

 therium and Megalonyx as being not merely predecessors but progenitors of those 

 still lingering remnants of the tardigrade race, into which such ancestral giants are 

 supposed to have dwindled down by gradual degeneration and alteration of characters. 

 But they deem the living habits of the Megatherium to have been far different from 

 those of its puny scansorial progeny: it was, in their opinion, a fossorial animal; 

 and not merely an occasional digger of the soil, as Cuvier concluded, but altogether 

 a creature of subterranean habits ; some earth-whale, as it were, or colossal mole. 

 Pander and D'Alton nevertheless give to this animal, which they truly characterized 

 as one of the most extraordinary of its class, the name of * Riesen-faulthier,' Bra- 

 dy pus giganteus, or Gigantic Sloth*. 



Cuvier, in preparing his new and enlarged edition of the famous ' Recherches sill- 

 ies Ossemens Fossiles,' availed himself, in the fifth volume, published in 1823, of the 

 labours of the German anatomists and draughtsmen, just cited, and substituted 

 copies of their figures for those which he had previously borrowed from Bru. 



The teeth of the Megatherium are still described as being implanted by two roots, 

 and as being sixteen in number, formulized as m, l^: there is the same deficiency of 

 the sternal ribs, pubic bones and tail ; the manubrium sterni continues to be repre- 

 sented in a reversed position : but, with regard to the bones of the fore-foot, the 

 organization of which was involved in obscurity, owing to the faulty manner in which 

 Cuvier believed them to have been articulated, he endeavours to throw some new 

 light on their arrangement. After a comparison of the figures given by Pander and 

 D'Alton with the bones of the fore-foot in existing Edentata, Cuvier concludes that 

 the fore-feet in the Madrid skeleton are transposed, the right being on the left, and the 

 left on the right side ; that the index, medius and annular digits were the only ones 

 provided with claws; that the thumb was clawless, and the little finger rudimental 

 and concealed, in the living Megatherium, under the skin ; the hand being thereby 

 specially formed for cleaving the soil and digging, like that of the Dasypus gigas. On 

 this hypothesis, names are applied by Cuvier to certain bones of the carpus, none of 

 which had before been determined -f\ Cuvier, however, adds, that " in order to verify 

 his conjectures it must be necessary to have access to the skeleton itself, and to com- 

 pare separately each bone of the fore-foot with their homologues in that species of 

 Armadillo J." His ideas of the affinities of the Megatherium have now undergone some 



* Das Riesen-Faulthier, &c. fol. 1821, p. 16. 



f Recherches sur les Ossemens Fossiles, 4to. t. v. pt. 1. 1823, p. 185. pi. 16. fig. 13. The letters indica- 

 tive of the carpal bones have been omitted, by oversight, in the plates, but there is no difficulty in adding them 

 according to the description given by Cuvier in the text. 



J " Mais on sent que, pour verifier ces conjectures, il faudroitetre aupres du squelette, et en comparer sepa- 

 rement tous les os avec leurs analogues dans ce tatou, ce que j'espere que quelque anatomiste espagnol ne 

 tardera pas a faire." — lb. p. 185. 



