282 Quadrupeds. 



When the prince of our " out-door naturalists " was wandering in 

 the primaeval forests of Demerara ; when he watched the nimble sloth 

 (strange antithesis ! ) wending its way along the forest boughs in full 

 enjoyment of life and liberty ; when he afterwards penned that beau- 

 tiful history, in which the sloth is shown to be admirably constructed 

 for its requirings, and in which the Almighty is redeemed from the 

 wicked charge of having created a being for a life of unmitigated mi- 

 sery ; when he was thus letting in a flood of light on Zoology from 

 his truthful comments on the living, evidence was day by day accu- 

 mulating of the former existence of creatures whose frames were con- 

 structed on the model of the sloth's, but whose ponderous bulk must 

 have equalled that of the Hippopotamus, and whose Herculean strength 

 must have thrown that of the elephant or even Mastodon into eclipse. 

 What Waterton has done for the living, Owen has performed for the 

 dead ; and although we cannot give that unqualified assent to deduc- 

 tions from the admeasurement of bones which we cheerfully yield to 

 the history of living nature, yet w^e regard Owen's masterly analysis as 

 almost enforcing the views which he advocates with such consummate 

 ability ; indeed we cannot but infer from its pages that the sloths of 

 to-day, are the pigmy representatives of a vast tribe of gigantic beings 

 now utterly extinct. 



In the * Ossemens Fossiles ' * the illustrious Cuvier has given us a 

 detailed account of the structure of two of these extraordinary animals; 

 and, notwithstanding their vast discrepancy in size, the scientific 

 world at once adopted his view, that they belonged to the same natu- 

 ral order as the existing sloths. In 1838, the Society of Sciences at 

 Copenhagen, printed a most able communication from Dr. Lund, en- 

 titled * A View of the Fauna of Brazil previous to the last Geological 

 Revolution ; ' and an excellent translation of this paper by the Rev. 

 W. Bilton, appeared in several successive numbers of Mr. Charles- 

 worth's ' Magazine of Natural History.' In the course of his observa- 

 tions. Dr. Lund enters very fully on the structure of these extinct gi- 

 ants, and adduces views respecting them which are replete with inte- 

 rest. How far the genera named by Dr. Lund are identical with those 

 of Professor Owen, we are incompetent to decide; but we could have 

 wished that a more direct communication had taken place between 

 these authors ; by this means all risk of a confused synonymy — the 

 bane of science — might have been avoided : as it is fairness compels 

 us to admit the great probability that several of the genera — there are 



* Ossemens Fi>ssiles, toiuc v. part i. p. 174. 



