useful to man. Among these are the antelopes,* including
a great number of species, as well as the goat, horse, ass, and
ox kinds.
On the other hand, we find in the new world most of those
singular races, in the formation of which Nature seems to
have deviated most from her ordinary rules. - Such are the
tribes which Linnæus referred to his order of Bruta : they are
termed by Cuvier, Edentes, or quadrupeds defective with
respect to teeth, some of them being entirely destitute of
these organs of mastication, and all deficient.
America contains, for example, the whole family of tar-
digrades or sloths, which Buffon characterises as defective
monsters, as rude and imperfect attempts of Nature. Cuvier
has remarked of the living species - of this tribe, “ that we
find in them scflittle relation to ordinary animals ; the general
laws of organization prevailing among the species at present
existing apply so little to them, the different parts of
their bodies appear to be so much in contradiction to the laws
of coexistence which we find established through almost the
whole animal kingdom, th at we might really suspöct them to
be the remains of another order of things, the living relics of
that pre-existing nature, the ruins of which are elsewhere discovered
only in the interior of the earth, and we might conjecture
that these creatures have escaped by some miracle,
the catastrophes which have destroyèd the other species that
were their cotemporaries.”*f*
Besides the living species of sloth, two gigantic creatures
of the same singular family are known to us by their organic
remains: one of these is supposed to have been of the size of
an ox * the other as large as a rhinoceros. They have been
* The mountainous parte of America contain some animals allied to the argali,
or wild sheep. Three species have also been described which are nearly related to
the antelopes, but which are supposed to form a separate natural family, requiring
a distinct classification from the antelopes of the. old continent. Transactions
o f the Linnæan Society, vol. xiii. p. 40.
•f* Buffon’s Hist. Naturelle, Article des Tardigrades.—Cuvier, Mém. sur le Mé-
galonyx. Annales du Museum, tom. v.—Item, Mém. sur le Mégathérium, par le
même.—Ibid.
termed megalonyx and megatherium. Their relics have been
found only in America.
The fossil animals above mentioned, resembled in some peculiarities
of structure the myrmecophagae, a tribe which also
recedes from the common characters of quadrupeds in several
respects, but particularly in being entirely destitute of teeth.
They are peculiar to the new world; The same observation
may be applied to the a rm a d illo ^ of which there are numerous.
species. These belong to the order of B ru ta : they have
grinding teeth, but neither tusks nor incisores.
Some of these animals resemble more particularly the singular
tribes already mentioned as characterizing the t zoology
of New Holland: but they are in their reproductive economy
entirely similar tpi the mammalia properly so termed. The
torrid parts of America contain, however, a distinct marsupial
family, analogous to the Australian tribe, though consisting
entirely of peculiar species, and even of genera distinct'from
those, ofi New Holland. The relation of this structure r to the
local circumstances of the region is, here equally unknown,
but the marsupial, animals jg l America differ from .those; of
Terra Australis in various particulars; inJsome.of which we
discover a remarkable fitness for the countries which they
are destined to inhabit. The differences.^of the American
genera and species of marsupial animals have been described
by M. Geoffroy St. Hilaire. I shall only remark, that the
structure of the American kinds is more fitted for agility than
that of the pouched animals of New Holland, and that Nature
has provided them with long protrudate or museular
tails, which constitue a fifth limb,singularly useful to animals
which are the inhabitants of vast and lofty forests.
There are other tribes in the same region of America possessing
a similar conformation. The sapajous, a numerous
tribe of monkeys peculiar to these countries, have a slender,
spider-like form, which gives them great agility in climbing
trees; they have also propensile tails, like those of the
didelphis. , The same countries contain also the myrme-
cophagse, or American ant-eaters, the kinkajou, and hystrix
prehensilis; all of which are, in this respect, similar to the
opossum.