MEGATHERIUM. 139 
The structure of the scapula, already noticed, 
seems to show that the fore leg was adapted to 
co-operate with the tusks and teeth, in digging 
and separating large vegetables from the bottom. 
The great length attributed to the body, would 
have been no way inconvenient to an animal 
living in the water, but attended with much me- 
chanical disadvantage to so weighty a quadruped 
upon land. In all these characters of a gigantic, 
herbivorous, aquatic quadruped, we recognize 
adaptations to the lacustrine condition of the 
earth, during that portion of the tertiary periods, 
to which the existence of these seemingly ano- 
malous creatures appears to have been limited. 
SECTION II. 
MEGATHERIUM. 
As it will be quite impossible, in the present 
Treatise, to give particular descriptions of the 
structure, even of a few of the fossil Mammalia, 
which have been, as it were, restored again to 
life by the genius and industry of Cuvier ; I shall 
endeavour to illustrate, by the details of a single 
species, the method of analytical investigation, 
that has been applied by that great philosopher 
to the anatomy both of fossil and recent animals. 
The result of his researches, as recorded in the 
Ossemens Fossiles, has been to show that all 
