Page:Natural History (1848).djvu/247

Rh which might otherwise prove fatal, the brain was protected from concussion by the outer table of the skull being separated from the inner by extensive air-cells&#59; so that the external surface of the skull might be crushed in without permanent injury. In the specimen examined by Professor Owen there are evidences of such accidents. The skull presents two extensive and complicated fractures, the one of which is partly, and the other entirely healed, and both of which are confined to the exterior table.

"When we speak of a quadruped," observes Buffon, "the very name carries with it the idea of an animal covered with hair, as that of a bird, or a fish, suggests the corresponding ideas of feathers or scales respectively, as attributes inseparable from these beings&#59; yet nature, always more fertile in her resources than we are skilful in tracing her relations, or appreciating her designs, escapes at every moment from our most extensive observations, and astonishes us by her exceptions, still more than by her general laws." We are presented with one of these exceptions in the animals before us, whose bodies are covered with a peculiar crust or shell, not unlike that of a lobster, forming three bucklers, on the head, shoulders, and rump respectively, the two latter being connected by a series of narrow cross-bands of similar material, so like the plate-armour of the middle ages, as to have suggested the Spanish