ANT-EATERS V7

South American. The little one lives in trees ; the
large one, over seven feet long, lives on the ground,
tearing up the ant-hills with his powerful claws, and
licking up the ants with his long worm-like tongue,
The great ant-eater, or ant-bear as it is sometimes
called, is POrencive enough to man until attacked,
but a fight with it becomes a serious matter if at close
quarters.

Mr. C. B, Brown has a story of a Guianan Indian
who met his, death in one of these encounters. ‘In
returning home, considerably in advance of the
rest of his party, it is supposed that he saw a young
ant-eater, and was carrying it home, when its mother
gave chase, overtook and killed him; for, when his
companions came up, they found him ine dead on
his face in the embrace of the ant-bear, one of its
large claws having entered his heart. In the struggle
he had managed to stick his knife behind his back
into the animal, which bled to death, but not before
the poor Fallon had succumbed to its terrible hug.
So firmly had the ant-eater grappled him, that to
separate it from the corpse the Indians had to cut off
its fore-legs,’

Another family of edentates is that of the arma-
dillos, who have, however, a set of simple teeth.
These also are South Americans. They are heavily
armoured with overlapping plates, some of them being
able to roll themselves up into a ball in times of danger,
the head and tail fitting into notches in the shield:
They are all burrowers, and feed on anything they can
get, either vegetable or animal, dead or alive. They are
near akin to the glyptodonts, whose remains, of com-

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