180 



BANDA ORIENTAL. 



Nov. 1833. 



kill and take the skin off fifty in the same time. This 

 would have been a prodigious task, for it is considered a 

 good day^s work to skin and stake the hides of fifteen or 

 sixteen animals. 



November 26th. — I set out on my return in a direct line 

 for Monte Video. Having heard of some giant's bones at a 

 neighbouring farm-house on the Sarandis^ a small stream 

 entering the Rio Negro^ I rode there accompanied by my 

 host^ and purchased for the value of eighteen pence^ the head 

 of an animal equalling in size that of the hippopotamus. 

 Mr. Owen in a paper read before the Geological Society,* 

 has caUed this very extraordinary animal, Toxodon, from the 

 curvature of its teeth. The following notice is taken from 

 the proceedings of that society : Mr. Owen says, judging 

 from the portion of the skeleton preserved, the Toxodon, as 

 far as dental characters have weight, must be referred to the 

 rodent order. But from that order it deviates in the relative 

 position of its supernumerary incisors, in the number and 

 direction of the curvature of its molars, and in some other 

 respects. It again deviates, in several parts of its structure 

 which Mr. Owen enumerated, both from the Rodentia, 

 and the existing Pachydermata, and it manifests an affinity 

 to the Dhiotherium and the Cetaceous order. Mr. Owen, 

 however, observed, that the development of the nasal cavity 

 and the presence of frontal sinuses, renders it extremely 

 improbable that the habits of the Toxodon were so exclu- 

 sively aquatic as would result from the total absence of 

 hinder extremities ; and concludes, therefore, that it was a 

 quadruped, and not a Cetacean ; and that it manifested an 

 additional step in the gradation of mammiferous forms 

 leading from the Rodeiitia, through the IP achy der mat a to the 

 Cetacea ; a gradation of which the water-hog of South 

 America [Hydrochcdrus capybara) already indicates" the com- 

 mencement amongst existing Rodentia, of which order it is 

 interesting to observe this species is the largest, while at 



* Read, April 19th, 1837. A detailed account will appear in the 

 first part of the zoology of the voyage of the Beagle. 



