SYSTEM OF NATURE. 
141 
its thorax was wide rather than deep, its muzzle broad and truncated, its 
pelvis expanded, the head of the radius round and apt for rotation, the 
inflection of the carpus and tarsus free, the long claws prehensile, and 
the diet exclusively vegetable. Yet the claims of the Megatherians to be 
associated with the Apes and Lemurs are on these grounds equal vnth those 
of the sloths .” Into this brief but valuable passage Professor Owen has 
crowded all those structural characters which seem to me to lead to the 
conclusion at which I had previously arrived in the passage above cited, 
that the Megatherium was a sloth in all his characters. Whether it 
really does border on the ridiculous to assign weight to such an aggre¬ 
gate of structural similarity, and to express the resemblance by placing 
apes, lemurs, sloths and megatheriums in the proximity of each other, 
I must leave to the judgment of my readers. It is scarcely necessary 
to say that the whole tenor of Professor Owen’s work goes to establish the 
Megatheriidse as sloths, by a series of the most elaborate comparisons. 
No. 4 
l 
Page 15, line 25 .—" Inconsistent as it may appear to suppose any 
approach from the little monkey-like sloth to the giant elephant, 
these almost equally giant Megatheria will render the connexion 
more probable .” 
It appears, from Professor Owen’s description, that the hind foot of 
Mylodon was tetradactyle, the two inner toes being furnished with claws, 
the two outer toes with hoofs. This seems plainly to indicate that these 
huge creatures were, in their structure, intermediate between existing 
sloths and existing Belluse. 
