GIANT SLOTHS AND ARMADILLOS. 
191 
of mail. Their only enemies seem to be the monkeys, and one 
of the tricks of the young monkeys in the American forests is, 
when they find an armadillo away from home, to pull its tail 
unmercifully, and try to drag it about. Snakes cannot hurt them. 
Mr. Hudson, in his most interesting book, A Naturalist in La 
Plata, narrates how he watched an armadillo kill a snake and 
then devour it. 
If we examine the anatomy of the armadillo, we shall find that 
its bones greatly resemble those of the sloth, but still there are a 
few differences. It is a burrowing animal, and therefore requires 
great power of scratching and tearing the ground. Why the 
colossal forms of armadillo should have become extinct and only 
small ones survived to the present time, is one of the many and 
perplexing problems presented by the study of extinct animals. 
One would have thought from its size and strength that the 
Glyptodon had been built, like Rome, for eternity. 
