180 



THAT'S IT ; 



part of the animals included in 

 this order are not wholly without 

 teeth. They are either climbers 

 or burrowers, while one species is 

 aquatic. They feed upon insects 

 and other small earth-animals, 

 which require little mastication; 

 some feed upon leaves. This 

 order includes ant-eaters, g, sloths, 

 armadillos, &c. 



The great American ant-eater, 

 8, is characterized by the total 

 + absence of teeth, a narrow head, 8, 

 with an extremely slender elonga- 

 ted snout, 9, the mouth being a 

 small slit at its extremity ; the 

 tongue, 10, long, cylindrical, and 

 moistened by a gummy saliva, 

 which catches the ants upon which 

 the animal feeds. The ant-eater 



519. 



uses its long claws, 11, to. tear 

 the ant-hills to pieces, when the 

 insects are alarmed, and retire 

 into their hiding places. The 

 movements of the tongue, when 

 being darted out and again drawn 

 back with the insects, is wonder- 

 fully rapid. 



Armadillos, 12, are curious 

 members of this order* They 



are found only in South America, 

 and chiefly in the great valley of 

 La Plata. The name means 

 " clad in armour," their bony 

 covering having a resemblance to 

 plate armour. 



12 



520. 



They live chiefly in burrows, descending at an 

 angle of forty-five degrees, till they gain a depth 

 of about two feet and a half below the surface ; 

 they then proceed for four or five feet more 

 without descent, or rather with a little rising, 

 and the dwelling is at the further extremity. 

 By this mode they obtain a roof strong enough 

 not to fall in ; and the turn which it afterwards 

 takes secures them from rain, the quantity of 

 which that can enter by the small external 

 opening is not, under ordinary circumstances, 

 very great. Some of the species remain con- 

 stantly in their burrows during the heat, and 

 even the light of the day, and come abroad to 

 feed only during the night. Others come 

 abroad at all times, and are less easily alarmed. 

 They all, however, make for their burrows when 

 pursued ; and if they find that they cannot 

 reach them, they set about earthing themselves 

 with great expedition. Notwithstanding the 

 shortness of their legs, the apparent weight of 

 their mailed covering, and its stiffness, which 

 prevents flexure of the spine and those alternate 

 risings of the shoulders and the crupper, which 

 are seen in the ordinary mammalia, their pro- 

 gressive motion in a straight line is by no means 

 slow, for some of them will outrun an ordinary 

 man. They owe this rapid motion entirely to 

 the great muscular power of their legs, and to 

 that concentration of the action of the whole 

 body toward the sacrum as a point of rest, which 

 urges them forward when digging. 



Their digging is not confined to the excava- 

 tion of their dwellings, for they also practise it 

 in the seeking of their food. They thus get at 

 tuberous roots in the ground, and also at worms 

 and other small ground animals. As the struc- 

 ture of their tongues is not so well calculated 

 for the capture cf ants as those of ant-eaters, 

 they do not devour these insects in such num- 

 bers; but they are said to exterminate them 

 much more speedily and completely from places 

 where they abound. They effect this by mining 

 obliquely into the ant-hills in all directions, and 

 especially by digging down upon those places 

 where the chrysalids cf the young ants are col- 

 lected, the capture of which annoy s the workers 

 more than that of a part of their own numbers. 

 The holes which they make are also too deep and 

 large for beins easily fiBed up by the. ants ; and 

 as they admit water to the rery lowest inhabited 



