18 EIGHTEENTH ANNUAL REPORT ON THE STATE CABINET. 



The specimens were prepared by Professor Henry A. Ward of 

 Rochester, N.Y., and -with such fidelity and skill that it is not easy 

 to distinguish them from the originals. The colossal size of some, 

 and the beauty of execution of all, throw a flood of light on the 

 inhabitants of a former world. Many of them seem instinct with 

 life, so natural is their representation j and the observer is carried 

 by imagination down the flight of ages to that Pre-Adamite period 

 when monsters, long ago extinct, ruled the Earth. 



Me^atlieiium cuvieri. 



This gigantic fossil was first made known to the scientific world in 1789. 

 It was discovered on the banks of the River Luxan near the city of Buenos 

 Ayres, and was subsequently transmitted to M.idrid, where, for half a cen- 

 tury, it excited the most lively speculations among all European naturalists 

 who were so fortunate as to see it. The original bones, of which the specimen 

 in the Wadsworth Collection is a copy, were found in the same Pampean 

 deposit between the years 1831 and 1838, and belong partly to the Hun- 

 terian Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons, and partly to the British 

 Museum. To give to the singular quadruped its proper position in the Ani- 

 mal Kingdom, was for many years a problem in comparative anatomy which 

 the savans of Europe could not solve. ,Led astray by the huge carapa?e of 

 the Glyptodon, found near it, the mtijority called it a mammoth Armadillo. 

 CuviER, who gave it its generic title, thought it combined the characters of 

 the Sloth, Anteater and Armadillo. The merit of throwing a flood of light 

 on the nature and structure of this most remarkable of all fossil mammals, 

 was reserved for the celebrated English Geologist, Professor Owen. He 

 conclusively proves that the Megatherium was a "Ground Sloth," feeding 

 on the foliage of trees which it uprooted by its strength. 



The extreme length of the mounted skeleton' is 17 feet and 9 inches : its 

 height, from the pedestal to the top of the spinous process of the first dorsal 

 vertebra, is 7 feet. No other fossil so exceeds its modern representative, as 

 the lordly Megatherium surpasses the pigmy remnant of the Tardigrade 

 race ; for the largest living Sloth does not exceed 2 feet in length. One is 

 tempted to join the Spanish naturalist who ol jected to the place assigned 

 to the Megatherium, because "all the other Edentates could dance in his 

 carcase." But that there is the closest affinity between it and the diminutive 

 arboreal Sloth, is now undenialle. The number of the teeth, their deep in- 

 sertion, equable breadth and thickness, deeply excavated base, inner struc- 

 ture and unlimited growth, and the absence of canines, are characters com- 

 mon to both. Both have the peculiar zygomatic arch to the skull : the 

 alveoli of the jaws correspond in number, position and relative depth. There 

 is the same anomalous shortness of face ; a similar development of air cells 

 surrounding the cerebral cavity ; the like scapula, clavicle, os-iCed sternal 

 ribs ; the identically expanded ilia ; the flattened femur ; and an equal 

 number of sacral vertebrae. The part in which the Megatherium least re- 

 sembles the Sloth, is the tail ; and, as a general rule, in those modifications 

 of structure in which it diff"ers from its living analogue, it approximates to 

 the Anteater; e. g. in the number and structure of the true vertebrae. 



The astragalus is the most characteristic i-ingle bone in the skeleton ; its 

 upper surface being so hollowed on one side, with a wide creecentic groove, 

 as to throw the whole weight of the leg upon the inner side of the foot. The 

 anchylosis of the tibia and fibula is known among existing quadrupeds only 

 in armor-bearino; Edentates. 



