PROFESSOR OWEN ON THE MEGATHERIUM. 
36,3 
the Madrid skeleton, but not in Sir Woodbine Parish’s collection ; expressing by a 
pale tint the parts in that collection which also exist in the Madrid skeleton; and 
indicating by a dark tint the additional parts which are deficient in the Madrid 
skeleton, and had not before been figured. 
Besides the important elements thus added towards the completion of our know- 
ledge of the skeleton, Mr. Clift was enabled to correct an error into which Cuvier 
had been led by a figure of a mutilated tooth in tab. 4. fig. 5, f, of Garriga’s memoir, 
which seemed to show that it had been implanted, as Cuvier describes it to have 
been, by two fangs. Pander and D’Alton give a similar figure of one of the teeth 
in their tab. 2. fig. 15. The figure of the natural size of one of the teeth of the Me- 
gatherium transmitted by Sir Woodbine Parish, given in the third plate (pi. 45. fig. 2.) 
of Mr. Clift’s memoir, is the first accurate Representation of these characteristic parts, 
and shows that the implanted base is widely excavated for a persistent matrix, as in 
the Sloths and Armadillos. 
The prevalent belief among Comparative Anatomists and Naturalists at this 
period, founded upon the additional observations by Weiss and Clift to those con- 
tained in the second edition of the ^Ossemens Fossiles’ of Cuvier, may be gathered 
from such notices as were then published of the opinions expressed by the eipinent 
professors of those sciences on the subject. Thus Dr. Robert Grant, treating of the 
Armadillos, in his Lectures on Comparative Anatomy, says, “The Megatherium itself 
appears to have been such a digging loricated animal, and in many cf its bones 
resembles the Armadillos*.” 
The Very Rev. Dr. Buckland, in his Bridgewater Treatise published in 1836, ad- 
mitting the probability, from the evidence at that time adduced, that the Megathe- 
rium had been defended by a bony tessellated armour, argues that — “A covering of 
such enormous weight would have been consistent with the general structure of the 
Megatherium : its columnar hind legs and colossal tail were calculated to give it due 
support ; and the strength of the loins and ribs, being very much greater than in the 
Elephant, seems to have been necessary for carrying so ponderous a cuirass as that 
which we suppose to have covered the body.” He next calls attention to the broad 
and rough flattened surface of a part of the crest of the ileum, to the broad summits 
of the spines of many vertebrae, and also to the superior convex portion of certain 
ribs, on which the armour could rest, as affording “evidence of pressure, similar to 
that we find on the analogous parts of the skeleton of the Armadillo, from which,” 
* Lecture, reported in the ‘ Lancet,’ March 29, 1834 : and again, in 1839, the Megatherium is described by 
Dr. Grant as being “ allied in structure to the Bradypus, and shielded with cutaneous plates like th^Dasypus.” 
— Thomson’s ‘British Annual’ for 1839, p. 274. M. Desmauest, in the art. Megathere of the ‘ Dictionnaire 
des Sciences Naturelles,’ 1823, writes as follows : — “ Leurs membres etaient robustes et termines par cinq gios 
doigts. Des observations recentes paroissent prouver que sa peau, epaissee et comme ossifiee, etait partagee 
en une foule d’ecussons polygones et rapprochds les uns des autres comme les pieces qui entrent dans la com- 
position d’une mosaique.” — “ La forme des molaires et la taille de ces animaux semblent indiquer qu’ils' se 
nom'rissoient de vegetaux et sans doute de racines.” 
