THESE animals are commonly known under the name of scaly lizards; we reject this denomination; 1st, because it is a compound; 2dly, because it is ambiguous, and applied to both species; 3dly, because it is wrongly imagined; these animals being not only of another species, but even of a different class, than the lizards, which are oviparous reptiles, while the pangolin, and the phatagen, as they are called in their native countries of the east, are viviparous quadrupeds.
All lizards are covered with a sleek speckled skin, in representation of scales, but these animals have no scales on their throat, breast, or belly, the phatagen, or long-tailed manis, ([fig. 126]) like other quadrupeds, has hair on all these under parts of the body; the pangolin, or short-tailed manis ([fig. 125]) has nothing but a smooth skin without hair. The scales with which all the other parts of the bodies of these two animals are covered do not stick to the skin, they are only strongly fixed at the lower parts, being moveable, like the quills of a porcupine, at the will of the animal; they raise these scales when exasperated, and when particularly so, they roll themselves up like a ball, resembling the hedge-hog: these scales are so big, so hard, and so sharp, that they repel all animals of prey; it is an offensive armour which wounds while it resists. The most cruel and voracious animals, such as the tiger and the panther, make but useless efforts to devour these animals, they tread upon, and roll them about, but when they attempt to seize them, they receive severe wounds; they can neither destroy them by violence, nor bruize, or smother them with their weight. The fox is averse to attacking the hedge-hog when rolled up, but he forces him to stretch himself by treading on, and squeezing him with all his weight, and as soon as his head appears, he seizes the snout, and thus secures him as a prey. But of all quadrupeds, without even excepting the porcupine, the armour of the manis is the strongest and most offensive, and which animals, by contracting their bodies and presenting their weapons, brave the fury of all their enemies. When they contract themselves, they do not take, like the hedge-hog, a globose figure, but form an oblong, their thick and long tail remaining outwardly and encircling their bodies; this exterior part, by which it would seem these animals could be seized, carries its own defence; it is covered with scales equally hard and sharp as those with which the body is cloathed, and as it is convex upwards and flat below, nearly in the form of half a pyramid, the sides are covered with square scales folding in a right angle, as thick and as cutting as the others, so that the tail seems to be still more strongly armed than the body, the under parts of which are unprovided with scales.
The short-tailed manis is larger than the long-tailed kind; his fore feet are covered with scales, but the feet of the latter, and part of his fore legs are clothed with hair only. The former has also larger scales, thicker, more convex, uniformly cutting, and not so close as those of the latter, which are armed with three sharp points; he is also hairy upon the belly; the other has no hair on that part of his body, but between the scales which cover his back, some thick and long hair issues like the bristles of a hog, which are not on the back of the long-tailed species. These are all the essential differences which we have observed in the skins of both these animals, and which distinguish them from all other quadrupeds so much, that they have been looked upon as a species of monsters. From these general and constant differences, we dare affirm them to be two animals of distinct species. We have discovered their analogies and differences, not only by the inspection of three of them, which we have seen, but also by comparing all which has been observed by travellers and naturalists.
The short-tailed manis is from six to eight feet in length, his tail included, when he comes to his full growth; the tail is nearly as long as the body, though it appears shorter when the animal is young; the scales are not then so large nor so thick, and of a pale colour; the colour becomes deeper in the adult, and the scales acquire such a hardness, as to resist a musket ball. Both these animals have some affinity with the great and middle ant-eater, for like them they feed on ants, have very long tongues, narrow mouths, without apparent teeth; their bodies and tails are also very long, and the claws of their feet very near of the same length and the same form, but they have five toes on each foot, while the great and middle ant-eaters have but four to their fore feet; these are covered with hair, the others are armed with scales; and besides they are not natives of the same continent. The ant-eaters are found in America, and both the species of the manis belong to the East Indies and Africa, where the negroes call them quogelo; they eat their flesh, which they reckon a delicate wholesome food, and use their scales for different purposes. They have nothing forbidding but their figure; they are gentle and innocent, feeding upon insects only; they never run fast, and cannot escape the pursuit of men, except by hiding themselves in hollow rocks, or in holes, which they dig themselves, and in which they breed. They are two extraordinary species, not numerous, and seemingly useless: their odd form seems to exist as an intermediate class betwixt the quadrupeds and reptiles.
WHEN we speak of a quadruped, the very name seems to carry the idea of an animal covered with hair; as when we mention a bird, or fish, feathers and scales present themselves to our imagination, and seem to be inseparable attributes of those beings: yet Nature, as if willing to deviate from this characteristic uniformity, and to elude our views, offers herself, contrary to our general ideas, and in contradiction to our denominations and characters, and amazes more by her exceptions than by her laws. Quadrupeds, which we look upon as the first class of living nature, and who are, next to man, the most remarkable beings of this world, are neither superior in every thing, nor separated by constant attributes from all other animals. The first of those characters which constitutes their name, and which consists in having four feet, is common to lizards, frogs, &c. which differ, however, from quadrupeds in so many other respects, as to make them be considered as a separate class. The second general property, to produce young alive, is not peculiar to quadrupeds, since it is also common with cetaceous animals. And the third attribute, which seems the less equivocal, as it is the most apparent, that of being covered with hair, exists not in several species which cannot be excluded from the class of quadrupeds, since this single characteristic excepted, they are like them in all other respects: and, as these exceptions of nature are but gradations calculated to join in a general chain, the links of the most distant beings, we should seize these singular relations as they offer themselves to our view. The armadillos, instead of hair, are covered, like turtles, craw-fish, &c. with a solid crust. The manis is armed with scales like fish; the porcupine carries a sort of prickly feathers, the quill of which is like that of the birds. Thus in the class of quadrupeds, and in the most constant characteristic of these animals, that of being covered with hairs, Nature varies in bringing them near the three different classes of birds, fishes, and the crustaceous kinds. We must be cautious then in judging of the nature of beings by one single character, as that would always lead us into error; even two or three characters, though general, are often insufficient, and it is only, as we have often repeated, by the union of all the attributes, and by enumerating all the characters, that we can judge of the essential qualities of the productions of nature. A good description without definitions, an exposition more exact on the differences than the analogies, a particular attention to exceptions and almost imperceptible gradations, are the true rules, and I dare assert, the only means of estimating nature. If the time lost in forming definitions had been employed in making good descriptions, we should not at this day have found Natural History in its infancy; we should have had less trouble in taking off her bawbles, disentangling her from her swaddling clothes, and, perhaps, have anticipated her slow discoveries, for we should have written more for science; and less against error.
But to return to our subject; it appears then that there exists several species of animals which are not covered with hair among the viviparous quadrupeds. Armadillos form alone a whole genus, in which may be reckoned many distinct species, all of whom are, however, covered with a crust, resembling bone; it covers the head, neck, back, flanks, rump, and the tail, to the very extremity. The crust is covered with a thin skin, sleek and transparent: the only parts that are not sheltered by this buckler are the throat, breast, and belly, which have a white grainy skin, like that of a plucked fowl, by inspecting these parts with attention, we perceive the rudiments of scales of the same substance as the crust; the skin of these animals, even in the places where it is most soft, is therefore inclined to become bony, but the ossification is only realized on the superior and external parts of the body. This crust is not in one piece, like that of the turtle, but consists of several bands, joined to each other by membranes, which allow this armour a degree of motion. The number of these bands does not depend, as might be imagined, on the age of the animal. The young armadillos, and the adults, have the same number of stripes, of which we have been convinced by comparing them; and though we cannot be certain that all these animals do not intermix and produce promiscuously, yet it is very probable, that since the difference in the number of these moveable bands is constant, they are really distinct species, or at least lasting varieties, produced by the influence of various climates. In this uncertainty, which time alone can remove, we have thought proper to mention all the armadillos under one head, enumerating each of them as if they were, in fact, so many different species.
Father d’Abbeville seems to be the first who has distinguished them by different names or epithets, and which have been, for the most part, adopted by the authors who have written after him. He has clearly indicated six species of them: first, tatououasso, or, as we call it, twelve-banded armadillo; 2. the tatouette, or eight-banded; 3. the encuberto of Marcgrave, or six-banded; 4. the tatua-apara, or three-banded; 5. the cinquinçon, or eighteen-banded; 6. cachichame, or nineteen-banded. Other travellers have confounded the species; but we have borrowed only the description of the apar and the cinquinçon, having seen the other four.