All, except the cinquinçon have two long bucklers, one at the shoulders, and another on the rump; they each consist of one solid piece; but the cuirass, which is also bony, and covers the body, is transversely divided, and parted into more or less moveable bands, separated from each other by a flexible skin. But the cinquinçon has but one buckler, and that on his shoulder, the rump being covered with moveable bands, like those of the cuirass of the body. But we shall now proceed to a description of them particularly.
THE first author who described this animal was Clusius, and though his description was from a drawing only, it is evidently the same species which Marcgrave calls the tatua-apara; from its three moveable stripes, and its short tail; he has an oblong head, almost pyramidal; the snout sharp, small eyes, short round ears, and the upper part of the head covered with a helmet of one piece; he has five claws to each foot; the two middle claws of the fore feet are very long, and the two lateral shorter; the fifth, which projects, is the least. In the hind feet they are shorter and more even. The tail is but two inches in length, and is entirely covered with a crust; the body is a foot long, and above eight inches in its largest breadth. The cuirass, which covers it, is divided into four parts, and composed of three moveable transverse bands, which give the animal liberty to bend and contract his body in a round form; the skin between the stripes is very supple. The bucklers which cover the shoulders and rump are composed of five pieces, equally disposed in five angles; the three moveable bands betwixt these two bucklers consist of square pieces, ornamented with little scales of a straw colour. Marcgrave adds, that when he lies down to sleep, or any person touches him, he brings his fore feet together, lays his head under his belly, and bends himself so perfectly round that he looks more like a sea-shell than a terrestrial animal. This contraction is made with the assistance of two great muscles on the sides of his body, and the strongest man finds it difficult to force him with his hands to stretch out. Piso, and Ray, have added nothing to the description of Marcgrave, but it is singular that Seba, who has given us a description and figure of this animal evidently copied after Marcgrave, not only not mentions that author, but tells us, “that no naturalist has known this animal, that it is extremely scarce, and found in the most remote countries of the East Indies,” when in fact this animal is well described by Marcgrave, and the species is well known, not indeed in the East Indies, but in America, where it is very common. The only real difference between the description of Seba, and that of Marcgrave is, that the latter gives the animal five claws to each foot, and Seba allows him but four, and yet they evidently speak of the same animal.
Fabius Calumna has given the description and figure of an armadillo contracted into a ball, which seems to have had four moveable bands, but as this author was absolutely unacquainted with the animal, whose skin or shell he has described, as he did not even know the name of the armadillo, though mentioned by Bellon fifty years before, but gave him a Greek name, (cheloniscus); besides, as he confesses, that the skin had been pasted together, and wanted several pieces, we do not see ourselves authorised to pronounce, as our modern nomenclators have done, that a species of armadillo, with four moveable bands, exists in Nature; and more especially since these imperfect indications given in 1606, by Fabius Calumna, no mention is made of it in the works of any naturalists; and, if he really did exist, he certainly would have been introduced into some cabinets, or have been observed by some travellers.
Engraved for Barr’s Buffon.
