Page:The Zoologist, 4th series, vol 3 (1899).djvu/409

Rh half-gnawed stumps of trees, an important clue to the identity of an animal which, unlike others of its species, did not climb the branches, but simply razed them to the ground by means of its prodigious strength. Professor Moreno believes that this fragment of skin belongs to the real Mylodon, and that it owes its present state of preservation to certain contributory circumstances which on other occasions have destroyed the potency of the effacing hand of time and weather! The skin has been exhibited before the Royal and Zoological Societies, where it had to pass under the review of some of the leading zoological and geological experts of the day.

"On the other hand, Dr. Ameghino claims to have procured some of the skin from natives, who assured him that they shot the animal, and that owing to the bony lumps it had to be literally hacked from off the carcase. He regards it as a living representative of the Gravigrades of Argentina, and has given it the name of Neo-Mylodon listai. Be that, however, as it may, the animal in question is—or should be—about the size of a Bear, and in many quarters the possibility that it may yet be found alive is hopefully regarded. If it is alive, it is scarcely possible that it will elude for long the vigilance of so keen and practised a big-game hunter as young Mr. Cavendish, whose name has been given to a new species of Antelope which he recently discovered on his travels in Africa. Up to the present the Mylodon has only been found in a fossilized state, its remains having been brought to light in a pleistocene fluviatile deposit not far from the city of Buenos Ayres nearly sixty years ago. There is a complete skeleton, but nothing more substantial, in the Natural History Museum at South Kensington, and there is an almost entire one in the Hunterian Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons. As a consequence, the efforts of those gentlemen who are endeavouring to establish its reality in the flesh are being watched with the closest interest.

"As to the ordinary Sloth, it has been thought by many that owing to the imperfect nature of its formation its existence must be a positive burden to itself; but this is far from being the case, as those know who have seen the agility which it displays in its native state in the forests of America, despite the unequal length of its arms and legs. True, it is absolutely helpless on terra firma—in fact, it can neither walk nor stand—but even that is excusable in the case of an animal that not only moves but also rests, and even sleeps, in a state of suspension!

"Since the above was written news has reached England from Patagonia that several huge bones, entire skulls, powerful claws, and a complete hide of the animal have been discovered deep down in a cave by Dr. R. Hauthal, of the La Plata Museum, who had also joined the ranks of the pursuers."—F.P.S.