Note 59 — DESCRIPTION OF A CONSIDERABLE PART OF THE SKELETON OF A LARGE EDENTATE MAMMAL, ALLIED TO THE MEGATHERIUM AND ORYCTEROPUS, AND FOR WHICH IS PROPOSED THE NAME OF SCELIDOTHERIUM[44] LEPTOCEPHALUM.

For the translation of the following passage, and of others alluded to in the present work, from the original Danish Memoir of M. Lund, loc. cit., I am much indebted to the Rev. W. Bilton, M.A. &c. &c.:—

“Thus in every point of comparison we have instituted between the organization of burrowers and climbers; we have seen that the Megalonyx constantly differs from the former and resembles the latter; but the point to which I last alluded (the obliquity of foot), I consider to be quite decisive.

“There is one other point in its organization, which is not quite without weight in reference to our present inquiry,—I mean its unusually powerful tail. Now, it is certainly true that many animals which are not climbers have a powerful tail, as e. g. Armadillos, while the others that climb well, have none, as Sloths and Apes. But when we find a remarkably powerful tail attached to an animal that according to all probability was a climber, we are led to infer that this organ must have served for that purpose: in other words, that the Megalonyx was furnished with a prehensile tail.

“How far the Megatherium is to be considered in the same light as the Megalonyx cannot be decided without an accurate and scientific examination of its skeleton at Madrid. Pander and D’Alton do not mention any distortion of the hind-foot, neither does their figure exhibit any. It is nevertheless quite possible that such may exist, but that it is disguised by the faulty manner in which the skeleton is put up. It strikes me as little probable that two animals which agree so well in the principal particulars of their organization should differ so much in one of the most important. The Megatherium has been proved by later discoveries to possess the same powerful tail as the Megalonyx, and as it corresponds also with the latter entirely in the conformation of its extremities, the same difficulties present themselves against the supposition of its having been a burrower. But if the Megatherium was really a climber, it must have had still more occasion (on account of its greater size), for that peculiar arrangement of the hind-feet which we have described in the Megalonyx.”