﻿204 



Cincinnati Society of Natural History. 



SOME CURIOUS ANIMALS* 

 By Edward M. Cooper. 



I have thought it might prove interesting to give a brief description of 

 some of the curious animals that existed in past geological ages, but I 

 must deny any claim to originality, and acknowledge that my descriptions 

 are second hand, but derived from sources most authentic ; and I assure 

 you that the statements made are not copied from the posters of a travel- 

 ing menagerie, though some of them may sound sufficiently exaggerated 

 for even those reliable essays on natural history. That these wonderful 

 beings have lived at some period of the earth's history, there is no room 

 for doubt, as all the great museums of the world have been enriched with 

 more or less of their remains — even our own Museum containing both casts 

 and actual portions of some of them. 



The first one to which I shall call your attention is known as the 

 Megatherium — the word meaning great or huge wild beast — being the 

 name given by Cuvier to a large extinct animal belonging to the Order 

 Edentata. A nearly complete skeleton, found on the bank of the River 

 Luxan, near Buenos Ayres, and sent, in 1789, to the Boyal Museum at 

 Madrid, long remained the principal, if not the only, source of information 

 with regard to the species to which it belonged, and furnished the mate- 

 rial for many descriptions, notably for that of Cuvier, who determined its 

 affinities with the sloths. In 1832 an important collection of bones of the 

 Megatherium were discovered near the Bio Salado, and were secured for 

 the Museum of the College of Surgeons of England; and these, with an- 

 other collection found at Luxan in 1837, and now in the British Museum, 

 supplied the materials for the complete description of the skeleton pub- 

 lished in 1861 by Prof. Owen, the British geologist. He conclusively 

 proved that the Megatherium was a "ground sloth," and fed on the 

 foliage of trees, uprooting them by its great strength, or pulling down the 

 branches with its formidable forearms, resting on its hind legs and tail as 

 on a tripod. Other skeletons have since been received by several of the 

 continental museums — as Milan and Paris. 



In size, the Megatherium exceeded any existing land animal, except the 

 elephant, to which it was inferior only in consequence of the comparative 

 shortness of its limbs, for in length and bulk of body it was its equal, if 



* This paper, by Mr. Cooper, was read at the June meeting of the Society, and its 

 publication has been deferred to the present time. It was illustrated by a number of 

 magic-lantern views of the animals spoken of, prepared by Chas M. Woodward. — 

 Note by Editor. 



