178 MAMMALS

paratively recent age, are found in Texas and further
south, in Mexico and South America. These animals
were clad in a complete solid suit of armour of enor-
mous strength, which would seem to have preserved
them from the attacks of everything but starvation.
‘Why, says Mr. Kitchen Parker, ‘such a form as the
glyptodon should have failed to keep his ground is a
great mystery ; Nature seems to have built him, as
Rome was built, for eternity.’ The pangolins, or
manidz, represent the armour-clads in the Old World.
These also are burrowers, but some are tree-climbers.
They have overlapping horny scales and enormous
claws.

‘One of my friends, when in India,’ says the
Rev. J. G. Wood, ‘kept a pangolin for some time, but
found that it was endangering the safety of the house
by incessant burrowing. So, as he wished to keep
the skin, he determined to kill it himself. He there-
fore shot it with his Colt’s revolver. Instead of
penetrating the skin, the ball only knocked the
animal over, when it curled itself up into a ball, just
like the hedgehog, but was not even wounded. He
fired a second shot at it, and the ball recoiled upon
himself and bruised him. At last he was obliged to
insert the point of a dagger under the scales, and
drive it through the skin with a mallet. He after-
wards presented me with the skin and dagger. The
mark of both balls was perceptible on the scales, but
not one of them was even cracked.’

The seventh family of the edentates is that of the
aard-varks. Theseare the only ant-eaters with teeth.
They have tubular mouths, pig-like snouts, and long