United States or Mexico ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
We are more surprised by finding such gigantic proportions in an animal called the megatherium, which ranks in an order now assuming much humbler forms the edentata to which the sloth, ant-eater, and armadillo belong.
The swiftest and most agile animals, and a large proportion of those most useful to man, are also natives of the elder continent. On the other hand, the bulk of the edentata, a group remarkable for defects and meanness of organization, are American. The zoology of America may be said, upon the whole, to recede from that of Asia, "and perhaps in a greater degree," adds Dr.
Lastly, the law of the long endurance of allied forms on the same continent, of marsupials in Australia, of edentata in America, and other such cases, is intelligible, for within a confined country, the recent and the extinct will naturally be allied by descent.
The Aborigines of America range throughout the Continent; and this at first appears opposed to the above rule, for most of the productions of the Southern and Northern halves differ widely: yet some few living forms, as the opossum, range from the one into the other, as did formerly some of the gigantic Edentata. The Esquimaux, like other Arctic animals, extend round the whole polar regions.
At Ootacamund, on the continent of the Dekkan, spring-guns have been used with great success by the Superintendent of the Horticultural Gardens; placing them so as to sweep the runs of the porcupines. The flesh is esteemed a delicacy in Ceylon, and in consistency, colour, and flavour it very much resembles young pork. V. EDENTATA. Pengolin.
Formerly, but within the period when most of the now existing shells were living, North America possessed, besides hollow-horned ruminants, the elephant, mastodon, horse, and three genera of Edentata, namely, the Megatherium, Megalonyx, and Mylodon.
In failing orders, with the genera and species decreasing in numbers as is the case with the Edentata of South America, still fewer genera and species will leave modified blood-descendants.
Associated with this last were remains of not less than thirty mammiferous quadrupeds, including three species of rhinoceros, a large anoplotherium, three species of deer, two antelopes, a true dog, a large cat, an animal like a weasel, a small hare, and a huge species of the edentata. Both of these places are considerably to the north of any region now inhabited by the monkey tribes.
Nor can it be pretended that it is an immutable law that marsupials should have been chiefly or solely produced in Australia; or that Edentata and other American types should have been solely produced in South America.
Lastly, the law of the long endurance of allied forms on the same continent, of marsupials in Australia, of edentata in America, and other such cases, is intelligible, for within a confined country, the recent and the extinct will naturally be allied by descent.
Word Of The Day