NOTICE OP THE MEGATHERIUM. 
15 
Such, as we have described it, was the Megatherium in its form, and such was, according to 
all physiological probability, its mode of obtaining its food. Of its further habits we can form 
little estimate. In following the analogy lent us by the living sloth, we may consider that the 
huge extinct animal once roamed the plains in solitary loneliness; or that at best there were 
but three or four individuals in a herd together. Indeed, the necessities of the creature, to 
secure an enormous daily supply of food, would have obliged the individuals to have separ- 
ated widely, unless the vegetation which clothed the pampas in that earlier period, were far 
less sparse than that which we see there at the present day. The gathering in troops, as we 
see among many of the grass-feeding Ruminants, for purposes of self-defence, was not a neces- 
sity for these ponderous Edentates, whose size alone must have been, as we have before 
remarked, a protection against any living foe; nor were they drawn together in flocks by 
those influences which cause polygamous animals thus to congregate. The Megatherium was, 
doubtless, like the Sloth, uniparous, giving birth, after a long period of gestation, to a single 
large young, which would for a long time receive the care of one or both parents, before it 
could itself undertake the arduous efforts which its mode of feeding required. The progression 
of the animal upon the ground was doubtless much more rapid than that of its modern, tardi- 
grade, successor, whose whole organization is modified for its home in the trees ; but it still 
probably never taxed the limited sustaining capacities of its mutilated outer toes by any pace 
more rapid than a walk. Much of its time must have been spent in stripping the trees which 
it had prostrated, and its position was then doubtless a reclining one; its hind extremities 
folded beneath its body, and its fore-legs bent at the elbow, allowing its chest to rest fully upon 
the ground, and its fore-arm and hand to be free for bringing one after another to its mouth 
the light boughs of the fallen tree. Indeed, Prof. Agassiz has ventured the opinion* that this 
crouching attitude was constant to the animal, and that it crept along with the full length of 
its fore-arm resting upon the ground, — a mode of progression which is said to be adopted by 
the modern Sloth, when making its painful transit along the ground from one tree to another. 
But of whatever kind were the locomotive actions of The Megatherium, we feel sure that they 
were dow ones. Had we beheld it living on its native plains, its slowness of movement would 
probably have excited our wonder even more than its colossal size. 
§ 4. ZOOLOGICAL POSITION. 
The position which the Megatherium holds in the long series of Mammalian forms was 
first scientifically determined by Cuvier. He referred it to the order of the Edentates — an 
order which, at the present day, is remarkable for the W&za/rre and aberrant forms which it 
contains. The Anteaters, the Armadillos, and the Sloths — its three great groups — present 
few features in common, save their feeble dentition ; all the teeth being wanting in the former 
* Proc. Bost. Soc. Nat. Hiat., ix., 193. 
