Part 25

Footnote 47:

Lund, Videnskabernes Selskabs, Natur.: og Mathem. Afhandlinger, Kiöbenhavn, vol. viii.

Footnote 48:

Linn. Trans. vol. xvii. (1833) p. 17.

Footnote 49:

Zool. Proceedings, 1832, p. 134.

Footnote 50:

The anterior prolongation of the sternum in front of the neck and the corresponding anterior position of the clavicles and scapulæ occasions a transference of such a proportion of the moving powers of the head from the cervical vertebræ to these bones in the mole, as renders any modifications of these vertebræ, like those in the Armadillo, uncalled for.

Footnote 51:

Loc. cit.

Footnote 52:

Bridgewater Treatise, p. 46.

Footnote 53:

Bridgewater Treatise, p. 152.

Footnote 54:

Dasypus 6–cinctus, L., is the species of which I have the astragalus separate, so as to be able to follow out the comparison.

Footnote 55:

In distinguishing these trochleæ as fibular and tibial, it is to be understood that the terms relate only to aspects corresponding to the position of those bones, and not that the fibula is articulated to the whole of the trochlea so called: it probably rested only upon the outer facet in the Scelidothere.

Footnote 56:

This astragalus was found at Santa Fé, in Entre Rios, associated with the remains of the Mastodon and Toxodon; but from its size and form I entertain little doubt that it belonged to a Megatherioid quadruped as large as the Mylodon or Megalonyx. The brief allusion to the astragalus of the Megalonyx in M. Lund’s Memoir does not afford the means of determining with certainty this point.

Footnote 57:

See the figures of this bone, given by Cuvier in Pl. x. and xi. Ossemens Fossiles, vol. v. part i.

Footnote 58:

Ossemens Fossiles, vol. v. part i. p. 163.

Footnote 59:

For the translation of the following passage, and of others alluded to in the present work, from the original Danish Memoir of M. Lund, loc. cit., I am much indebted to the Rev. W. Bilton, M.A. &c. &c.:—

“Thus in every point of comparison we have instituted between the organization of burrowers and climbers; we have seen that the Megalonyx constantly differs from the former and resembles the latter; but the point to which I last alluded (the obliquity of foot), I consider to be quite decisive.

“There is one other point in its organization, which is not quite without weight in reference to our present inquiry,—I mean its unusually powerful tail. Now, it is certainly true that many animals which are not climbers have a powerful tail, as e. g. Armadillos, while the others that climb well, have none, as Sloths and Apes. But when we find a remarkably powerful tail attached to an animal that according to all probability was a climber, we are led to infer that this organ must have served for that purpose: in other words, that the Megalonyx was furnished with a prehensile tail.