ITS CHARACTERISTIC ANIMALS. 197 
of lifting himself against the trunk of a tree. 
They were clumsy brutes, and though their limbs 
were evidently built with reference to powerful 
movements, perhaps climbing, or at least rising 
on their hind quarters, the act of climbing with 
them cannot have had anything of the nimbleness 
or activity generally associated with it. On the 
contrary, they probably were barely able to sup- 
port their huge bodies on the hind limbs, which 
are exceedingly massive, and on the stiff, heavy 
tail, while they dragged down with their front 
limbs the branches of the trees, and fed upon 
them at leisure. The Zoological Museum at 
Cambridge is indebted to the generosity of Mr. 
Joshua Bates for a very fine set of casts taken 
from the Megatherium bones preserved in the 
British Museum and the College of Surgeons. 
They are now mounted, and may be seen in one 
of the exhibition-rooms of the building. Large 
Reptiles, but very unlike those of the Creta- 
ceous and Jurassic epochs, belonging chiefly to 
the types of Turtles, Crocodiles, Pythons, and 
Salamanders, existed during the Tertiary epochs. 
The subjoined wood-cut represents a gigantic Sal- 
amander of the Tertiary deposits. It is a curious 
fact, illustrative of the ignorance of all anatomi- 
cal science in those days, that, when the remains 
of this reptile (Andrias, as it is now called) were 
first discovered towards the close of the seven- 
