ry Mammalia, one of those most common on the
North-American continent seems to have been the Mastodon. The
magnificent specimens preserved in this country are too well known to
require description. The remains of the Rhinoceros occur also in the
recent Tertiary deposits of North America, though as yet no perfect
skeletons have been found. The Edentata, now confined to South America
and the western coast of Africa, were also numerous in the Southern
States during that time; their remains have been found as far north as
the Salt Lick in Kentucky. But we must not judge of the Tertiary
Edentata by any now known to us. The Sloths, the Armadillos, the
Ant-Eaters, the Pangolins, are all animals of rather small size; but
formerly they were represented by the gigantic Megatherium, the
Megalonyx, and the Mylodon, some of which were larger than the Elephant,
and others about the same size of the Rhinoceros or Hippopotamus. The
subjoined wood-cut represents a Mylodon in the act of lifting himself
against the trunk of a tree.

[Illustration]

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 support their huge
bodies on their 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 Zooelogical
Museum at Cambridge is indebted to the generosity of Mr. Joshua Bates
for a very fine set of casts taken from the Megatherium in the British
Museum. 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 Cretaceous and Jurassic epochs, belonging chiefly to the types of
Turtles, Crocodiles, Pythons, and Salamanders, existed during the
Tertiary epochs. The wood-cut below represents a gigantic Salamander of
the Tertiary deposits. It is a curious fact, illustrative of the
ignorance of all anatomical science in those days, that, when the
remains of this reptile (Audrias, as it is now called) were first
discovered toward the close of the seventeenth century, they were
described by old Professor Scheuchzer as the bones of an infant
destroyed by the Deluge, and were actually