THIS is not so large as the last, he has a small head, a sharp snout, the ears erect, and rather long, the tail still longer, and the legs rather short. He has small black eyes, four toes on the fore-feet, and five on those behind; the head is covered with a helmet, the shoulders and rump with shields, and the body with a cuirass composed of eight moveable bands connected together, and with the bucklers, by nine joints of a flexible skin; the tail has also a similar number of bands. The colour of the cuirass on the back is iron grey, and on the flanks and tail of a light grey with spots of iron grey. The belly is covered with a whitish skin, grainy and hairy. The individual of this species, described by Marcgrave, had a head three inches long, the ears near two, the legs about three, the two middle toes of the fore-feet an inch; the body from the neck to the origin of the tail seven inches, and the tail nine inches in length; the bucklers had small white spots; the moveable bands were marked by triangular figures; this crust was not hard, being penetrable to the smallest shot which would kill the animal, whose flesh is very white, and good to eat.
NIEREMBERG has described this animal very imperfectly: Wormius and Grew have described him much better. The individual which Wormius mentioned was adult, and one of the largest of the species; that of Grew was younger and smaller. We shall only give their descriptions as far as they agree with our own specimens. Besides, it may be presumed, that this nine-striped armadillo is not really a distinct species from the eight, which he resembles in every other respect. We have two eight-banded armadillos which are dried, and seem to be both males; we have seven or eight with nine bands, one well preserved, which is a female, and the others are so dried up that we could not discern the sex. It is probable, therefore, that the eight-banded is the male and the nine-banded the female. But this is merely a conjecture for we shall give in the following article the description of two armadillos, one of which has more rows than the other upon the buckler on the rump, and yet they are so alike in every other respect, that one should be inclined to think this difference arises only from that of the sex, for it is not improbable, that greater numbers of these moveable bands may be necessary to facilitate the gestation and delivery of the female. The head of the armadillo, the skin of which Wormius has described, was five inches from the end of the snout to the ears, and eighteen inches from the ears to the tail, which last was a foot in length, and composed of twelve rings. The head of that described by Grew was three inches, the body seven and a half, and the tail eleven; the proportions of the head and body agree, but the difference of the tail is too great; and it is probable that the tail of that described by Wormius had been broken, for it should have exceeded a foot in length. As in this species the tail diminishes to the size of an awl, and is, at the same time, very brittle; few of the skins therefore have the whole tail preserved as that described by Grew.
THIS seems to be the largest of the species. He has a larger and broader head, and a snout not so sharp as the others; his legs and feet are thicker, and his tail has not any crust; a particularity which is alone sufficient to distinguish this species from all others. He has five toes on each foot, and twelve moveable bands. The buckler on the shoulders is formed of five or six rows, each composed of large quadrangular pieces. The moveable bands are also formed of large pieces, almost square; those which compose the buckler on the rump are like those on the shoulder. The helmet of the head consists of large irregular pieces. Between the joints of the moveable bands and in the other parts of the armour, there appear some hairs like the bristles of a hog; there are also upon his breast, belly, legs, and tail, round scales, almost imperceptible, hard and polished like the crust, and between which are small tufts of hair. The pieces which compose the helmet, the two bucklers, and the cuirass, being proportionally larger and less in number in this than in other armadillos, evidently prove he is the largest of the kind. The head of that from which we took this description was seven inches long, and the body twenty-one.