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The relationship, though distant, between the Macrauchenia and the Guanaco, between the Toxodon and the Capybara, the closer relationship between the many extinct Edentata and the living sloths, ant-eaters, and armadillos, now so eminently characteristic of South American zoology, and the still closer relationship between the fossil and living species of Ctenomys and Hydrochaerus, are most interesting facts.
Toads as Ant-eaters. In the autumn of last year, a pit, wherein I grew melons, was so much infested with ants, as to threaten the destruction of the whole crop; which they did, first by perforating the skin, and afterwards eating their way into the fruit; and, after making several unsuccessful experiments to destroy them, it occurred to me that I had seen the toad feed on them.
This and other causes acted to place the Placentals in the "Royal line" from which Man was evolved. The following families of Placental Mammals are recognized by Science, each having its own structural peculiarities: The Edentata, or Toothless creatures, among which are the sloths, ant-eaters, armadillos, etc. These animals seem to be closer to the Monotremes than they are to the Marsupials;
In this collection there are extinct species of all the thirty-two genera, excepting four, of the terrestrial quadrupeds now inhabiting the provinces in which the caves occur; and the extinct species are much more numerous than those now living: there are fossil ant-eaters, armadillos, tapirs, peccaries, guanacos, opossums, and numerous South American gnawers and monkeys, and other animals.
Perhaps the puma would not notice him as yet he had not. No doubt he would have done so, had there been nothing else on the spot to take off his attention; but just as he came into the open ground, his eyes fell upon the ant-eaters, where they lay squatted and licking up the termites.
The Sloths, the Armadillos, the Ant-Eaters, the Pangolins, are all animals of rather small size; but formerly they were represented by the gigantic Megatherium, the Megalonyx, and the Mylodon, some of which were larger than the Elephant, and others about the same size of the Rhinoceros or Hippopotamus.
Further, the most superficial study would at once convince us that, among the orders of placental mammals, neither the Whales, nor the hoofed creatures, nor the Sloths and Ant-eaters, nor the carnivorous Cats, Dogs, and Bears, still less the Rodent Rats and Rabbits, or the Insectivorous Moles and Hedgehogs, or the Bats, could claim our 'Homo', as one of themselves.
The puma did not spring up the tree at once, as Leon had expected. On the contrary, it crouched round and round with glaring eyes and wagging tail, as if calculating the mode of attack. Its lips were red stained with the blood of the ant-eaters and this added to the hideousness of its appearance. But it needed not that, for it was hideous enough at any time.
In all the divisions of animated nature there are ant-destroyers ant-eaters! To begin with the mammalia, man himself feeds upon them for there are tribes of Indians in South America, the principal part of whose food consists of dried termites, which they bake into a kind of "paste!"
But it may be this idea somehow got hold of Lazarus. I came home one evening and asked about the pigs. Elizabeth was doubtful. She had been out that day to look at them and was not encouraged by their appearance. She thought they had grown somewhat in length. When I inspected them next morning, I thought so, too. I said that Hans and Gretel were no longer pigs they were turning into ant-eaters.
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