down with a
thundering crash, cracking and snapping the great boughs like grass.
The frightened insects swarm out at every orifice, but the huge beast is
in upon them. With his sharp hoofs he tears apart the crusty walls of
the earth-nests, and licks out their living contents--fat pupae, eggs,
and all--rolling down the sweet morsels, half sucking, half chewing,
with a delighted gusto that repays him for all his mighty toil. While
this giant is absorbed in his juicy breakfast, see! there lounges along
his neighbour the macrauchen--equally massive, equally heavy, equally
vast, equally peaceful. The stranger resembles the huge rhinoceros,
elevated on much loftier limbs. But his most remarkable feature is the
enormously long neck, like that of the camel, but carried to the
altitude of that of the giraffe. Thus he thrusts his great muzzle into
the very centre of the leafy trees, and gathering with his prehensile
and flexible lip the succulent twigs and foliage, he too finds abundance
of food for his immense body in the teeming vegetation without intruding
on the supply of his fellows." [Owen on the "Mylodon."]

Emerging from the water appears a great head, with little piggish eyes
set wide apart, with immense muzzle and lips, and broad cheeks armed
with stiff projecting bristles--the sluggish toxodon. The creature
opens its cavernous mouth to seize a floating gourd; and now it tears up
the great fleshy arum roots from the clay bank, and grinding them to
pulp, sinks below to masticate its meal. Numberless other curious
creatures are roaming through the forest, or feeding on the banks; many
others, having run their destined course, disappear from the face of the
globe, to be replaced by a new creation of far less magnitude--the mild
llama, the savage jaguar, the nimble monkey with prehensile tail, the
ant-eater, arborial and terrestrial; the diminutive sloth, thick-skinned
tapir, alligators, turtles, and manatees; lizards, serpents; the
beautiful denizens of the air with superb plumage, numerous species of
humming-birds, gorgeous butterflies and beetles, vieing in their shining
hues with the rich gems hidden within the bowels of the earth.

It is of these, and of many others in wonderful variety; as well as of
their master--man--in his savage state; and of the curious trees and
shrubs, whose fruits afford him and the lower orders abundant
nourishment, that some outline sketches will now be given.

PART THREE, CH