190 PROFESSOR OWEN ch. VI. 



fed on the leaves. With their great tails and 

 huge heels firmly planted on the ground like a 

 tripod, they could exert the full force of their 

 most powerful arms and great claws. The 

 mylodon was also furnished with a long tongue 

 like a giraffe's, which would help it to reach its 

 leafy food with the aid of its long neck. Owen 

 supported this conjecture of his by the following 

 argument. 



He remarked that the particular skull he was 

 describing had two severe fractures, both of which 

 were longitudinal, not radiating like a smash in 

 an egg-shell. One had partially and the other 

 completely healed during the lifetime of the 

 creature. These fractures, he stated, could not 

 have been caused by blows from another animal, 

 for they were severe enough to have nearly killed 

 the mylodon, and would have, in that case, inevi- 

 tably left him an easy and unresisting prey to his 

 foe. But the mylodon had evidently got over 

 the first blow he had received, as the fracture had 

 healed. The probability was, then, that his habit 

 was to uproot trees for the purpose of feeding 

 upon their leaves, and once, when so doing, the 

 tree must have fallen with a crash upon his skull, 

 before he had time to move his huge carcass out 

 of the way, and that this fracture had apparently no 

 sooner healed than the same thing had happened 

 again. Now, the ' cranial organisation ' of the 

 mylodon was designedly modified in relation to 



