ARMADILLO. 
103 
of offending any other quadruped, and furnished 
with a peculiar covering for its own defence. 
The manis, described above, seems an inactive, 
helpless being, indebted for safety more to its pa- 
tience than its power ; but the armadillo is still 
more exposed and helpless. The manis is fur- 
bished with an armour that ^wounds while it resists, 
and that is never attacked with impunity ; but the 
armadillo is obliged to submit to every insult, 
without any power of repelling its enemy ; it is 
attacked without danger, and is consequently 
liable to more various persecutions. 
This animal being covered, like a tortoise, with 
a shell, or rather a number of shells, its other 
proportions are not easily discerned. It appears, 
at first view, a round misshapen mass, with a long 
head, and a very large tail sticking out at either 
end, as if not of a piece with the rest of the body. 
It is of different sizes, from a foot to three feet 
long, and covered with a shell divided into several 
pieces, that lap over each other like the plates in a 
coat of armour, or in the tail of a lobster. The 
difference in the size of this animal, and also the 
different disposition and number of its plates, have 
been considered as constituting so many species, 
each marked with its own particular name. In 
all, however, the animal is partially covered with 
this natural coat of mail ; the conformation of 
which affords one of the most striking curiosities in 
natural history. This shell, which in every respect 
resembles a bony substance, covers the head, the 
neck, the back, the sides, the rump, and the tail to 
the very point. The only parts to which it does not 
extend, are the throat, the breast, and the belly, 
which are covered with a white soft skin, somewhat 
resembling that of a fowl stripped of its feathers. 
If these naked parts be observed with attention, they 
will be found covered with the rudiments of shells. 
