QUADRUPEDS. 
337 
its muscular strength. Xt 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 he 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 diaws 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 Marsuptalia, so South America is the 
home of the Edentata, of which the Sloths and the Arma- 
dillos are, after the examplejust 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 Mylodous, 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. 
x 
