QUADRUPEDS. 



337 



its muscular strength. It feeds on ants, and on termites, 

 or white ants, as they are called, whose great houses of 

 cemented earth, that are so common in tropical forests, are 

 torn to pieces by these great claws, that the swarming in- 

 sects may be exposed and devoured. And this last opera- 

 tion is not less singular than other parts of the economy 

 of this creature. Its mouth, long and tubular, is entirely 

 destitute of teeth, but contains a tongue of great length, 

 ordinarily folded on itself, and capable of rapid protrusion 

 to a long distance. When the termites crowd to the 

 broken surface of their nest, as is their custom, the shrewd 

 Ant-bear darts into the midst of them his long tongue 

 covered with a glutinous secretion, and as swiftly draws it 

 back into his mouth, densely covered with the adhering 

 insects. 



This curious animal is a fair representative of a group 

 which includes the lowest forms of the true or placental 

 Mammalia — the Class Edentata. As Australia is the 

 great centre of the Maesuptalia, so South America is the 

 home of the Edentata, of which the Sloths and the Arma- 

 dillos are, after the example just described, the most impor- 

 tant living members. But recent discoveries have exhumed 

 from the soil of the same continent other and far more 

 gigantic representatives of the Class, the Megatheriums 

 and Mylodons, the vast bulk of whose bones indicates that 

 their strength must have been as irresistible as their forms 

 were colossal. Professor Owen, who built up, bone by 

 bone, that noble " skeleton of an extinct gigantic Sloth," 

 that stands — a monument of his skill and knowledge — in 

 the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons, has given 

 some interesting deductions respecting its mode of life. 



