From the account given by Mr. Oakley, and the apparent resemblance of the remains of this specimen to those previously discovered, although of a much smaller size, I was induced to believe that they belonged to a younger animal of the same species; other persons, however, who have since had an opportunity of comparing them with recent specimens of the dasypus family, have suggested that it is more probable that they belonged to a gigantic armadillo. Such is the belief entertained, I am told, at Paris, where casts of the bones in question have been sent. The other skeleton, found at Las Averias, was described to be as large as that of the megatherium. It lay in a bed of hard clay, on the side of the lake of Las Averias, partly exposed to view by the action of the water against it in stormy weather. Here a large portion of the shell appeared in a perfect state, and the country people, who took Mr. Oakley to the spot, assured him that, when first discovered, it was at least twelve feet in length, and from four to six in depth. It was very hard, but could not be got out whole. Mr. Oakley, however, brought away some considerable portions of it, which, in this instance, became harder the longer they were exposed to the external air. Not so the bones within, which, like those at Villanueva, almost immediately mouldered away on being taken out of the earth. A very imperfect fragment of the pelvis only reached Buenos Ayres.
On my return to England I exhibited these remains at the Geological Society, and afterwards made them over to the Royal College of Surgeons, whose collection of comparative anatomy is by far the finest in this country. Mr. Clift, the curator of that collection, undertook to describe them, and his paper upon them will be found in the "Transactions of the Geological Society for 1835." Casts of them, which were made at my desire, were also deposited in other museums, abroad as well as at home. Sir Francis Chantrey was kind enough to superintend the making of them, and to a simple suggestion of his, a solution of linseed-oil and litharge,[47] with which they were very thoroughly saturated, may be ascribed their restoration to a state hardly to be distinguished from that of the most recent bone.
Dr. Buckland, the learned professor of geology at Oxford, has since made the megatherium the subject of a chapter in his "Bridgewater Treatise," wherein he has fully described the remarkable peculiarities of its structure, in which, as he observes, it exceeds its nearest living congeners in a greater degree than any other known fossil animal. With the head and shoulders of a sloth, it combined, in its legs and feet, an admixture of the characters of the ant-eater, the armadillo, and the chlamyphorus: the latter it probably still further resembled in being cased with a bony coat of armour. Measuring the bones only, its haunches were more than five feet wide;[48] its thigh bone was twice the thickness of that of the largest elephant; the fore foot was a yard in length, and terminated by a gigantic claw; the tail, the width of the upper part of which was at least two feet, and which was probably clad in armour, must have been infinitely larger than that of any other known beast, amongst extinct or living mammalia. The whole body, according to the learned professor's calculations, was about eight feet in height, and twelve in length.[49] The annexed plate, carefully drawn from the original bones, under Mr. Clift's superintendence, will serve not only to give a general idea of the strange structure of this extraordinary monster, but to show the parts which are still wanting to make up the specimen. I will only add that, if any of those parts should fall into the hands of a casual collector, he will render a service to science by transmitting them to the curator of the College of Surgeons in London.
MEGATHERIUM.
Note: The Parts uncoloured are wanting.
Scale of 3 feet 3/8 of an Inch to a foot.
FOOTNOTES:
[46] With respect to the past, it is, I fear, useless to look for any very positive data as to the state of the river previously to the last century:—the only allusion to it which I can find is in the 'Argentina,' an historical poem by Barco Centenera, who went out in 1572 with the Adelantado Zarate, and who, speaking of its depth between Buenos Ayres and San Gabriel, off Colonia, on the opposite shore, says:—