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therefore, if correct, tcl be confirmed by corresponding peculiarities of the rest of 

 the skeleton. 



The whole frame of the Giraffe is so strikingly modified in harmony with the 

 vegetable substances which it selects fcft- its sustenance, that had this anomalous 

 animal been extinct, tfhe Palaeontologist might have inferred from the fossil ske- 

 leton that the long stilt-like legs, the short trunk, the lofty withers and tall ta- 

 pering neck, had coexisted to enable the living animal to browse on branches 

 beyond the reach of the largest of its nearest congeners, the Deer ; and that, 

 though by its teeth a Ruminant, the Giraffe must have been, of all its order, the 

 most independent of the herbage of the field for its support. Observation of the 

 living animal shows how admirably the soft parts, for instance, the muscular ex- 

 tensile lips and the long, flexible, prehensile tongue, cooperate with the general 

 proportions of the skeleton in the act of acquiring its leafy provender. 



The massive proportions and short thick neck of the colossal Elephant offer 

 the most striking contrast to the outward characteristics of the Giraffe ; but by 

 the endowment of that wonderful pi-ehensile organ the proboscis, it is enabled 

 to obtain a similar food. 



The general proportions of both the Megatherium and Mylodon resemble 

 those of the Elephant ; their body was relatively as large, their legs shorter 

 and thicker, their neck very little longer. Cuvier thought he could perceive 

 evidence of the attachment of a proboscis in the figures of the skull of the 

 Madrid Megatherium, but the size of the nervous foramina proves that such 

 a prolongation of the nose and upper lip could not have exceeded that in the 

 Tapir ; and a Hog's snout might be supposed to have been more serviceable than 

 a Tapir's proboscis to a quadruped which was conjectured to have supported 

 itself by digging for roots. The head in all known Megatherian quadrupeds is, 

 moreover, diminutive as compared with that of the Elephant, and the skull of 

 the Mylodon presents no more trace of a proboscis than does that of the Sloth. 

 It is plain, then, assuming the Megatherioids to have subsisted on the foliage 

 and smaller branches of trees, that they could not have obtained their food either 

 after the manner of the Giraffe or of the Elephant. 



By what new and equally striking modifications of the bodily frame qua- 

 drupeds of approximate bulk to the Elephant and Giraffe, yet neither proboscidian 

 nor of towering altitude, could have been sustained, like them, by the produce of 



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