MEGATHERIUM. 163 
relations to one another, and to the functions of 
the animal in which they occur. 
The size of the Megatherium exceeds that of 
the existing Edentata, to which it is most nearly 
allied, in a greater degree than any other fossil 
animal exceeds its nearest living congeners. 
With the head and shoulders of a Sloth, it com- 
bined in its legs and feet, an admixture of the 
characters of the Ant-eater, the Armadillo, and 
the Chlamyphorus ; it probably also still further 
resembled the Armadillo and Chlamyphorus, 
in being cased with a coat of armour. Its 
haunches were more than five feet wide, and its 
body twelve feet long and eight feet high ; its 
feet were a yard in length, and terminated by 
most gigantic claws; its tail was probably clad 
in armour, and much larger than the tail of 
any other beast, among extinct or living terres- 
trial Mammalia. Thus heavily constructed, 
and ponderously accoutred, it could neither run, 
nor leap, nor climb, nor burrow under the 
ground, and in all its movements must have 
been necessarily slow ; but what need of rapid 
locomotion to an animal, whose occupation of 
digging roots for food was almost stationary? 
and what need of speed for flight from foes, to 
a creature whose giant carcase was encased in 
an impenetrable cuirass, and who by a single 
pat of his paw, or lash of his tail, could in an 
instant have demolished the Couguar or the 
