BOST

OCT 18 1994

into rings; and finally a toxodon—a creature as large as an elephant, but related to the rats and mice and other gnawers.

These gigantic remains aroused the greatest enthusiasm in the young naturalist, and he had the satisfaction of being the first to present to English scientists specimens from this locality. He pictured the appearance of the huge animals when alive, and with Professor Owen later gave graphic descriptions of them. He says: He says: "The great size of the bones of the megatheroid animals, including the megatherium, megalonyx, scelidotherium, and mylodon, is truly wonderful. The habits of life of these animals were a complete puzzle to naturalists, until Professor Owen lately solved the problem with remarkable ingenuity. The teeth indicate, by their simple structure, that these megatheroid animals lived on vegetable food, and probably on the leaves and small twigs of trees; their ponderous forms, and great, strong, curved claws seem so little adapted for locomotion, that some eminent naturalists have actually believed that, like the sloths, to which they are intimately related, they subsisted by climbing back downwards on trees, and feeding on the leaves. It was a bold, not to say preposterous, idea to conceive even antediluvian trees with branches strong enough to bear animals as large as elephants. Professor Owen, with far more probability, believes that, instead of climbing on the trees, they pulled the branches down to them, and tore up the smaller ones by the roots, and so fed on the leaves. The colossal breadth and weight of their hinder quarters,

The South American Ostrich.

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which can hardly be imagined without having been seen, become, on this view, of obvious service, instead of being an incumbrance; their apparent clumsiness disappears. With their great tails and their huge heels firmly fixed like a tripod on the ground, they could freely exert the full force of their most powerful arms and great claws. Strongly rooted, indeed, must that tree have been which could have resisted such force! The mylodon, however, was furnished with a long extensile tongue like that of the giraffe, which, by one of those beautiful provisions of nature, thus reaches, with the aid of its long neck, its leafy food. I may remark, that in Abyssinia the elephant, according to Bruce, when it cannot reach with its proboscis the branches, deeply scores with its tusks the trunk of the tree, up and down and all around, till it is sufficiently weakened to be broken down."

Darwin was particularly interested in the rhea or South American ostrich, and was the first to give a careful account of its habits. As we have seen in a previous chapter, he followed it on horseback, racing with the huge bird in sport, watching it at once with the eye of a naturalist and sportsman. The rhea he found, though living upon grasses and tender roots, by no means confined itself to this diet, as one day while lying in concealment at Bahia Blanca he saw a number come down to the mud flats and feed there, obtaining, according to the Gauchos, small fish; and that they take to the water readily he was convinced on a later occasion by observing several swim the Santa Cruz River, which was at least four hundred yards wide, with a rapid current. In swimming,

the body of the bird was almost entirely concealed from view, the head and neck alone appearing above the surface, presenting a most comical appearance as they moved slowly along. The cock rhea is the larger, darker coloured, and can be distinguished by the natives from the female at a long distance. While standing in the brush one day the young naturalist heard a deep-toned hissing sound, which he at first thought proceeded from some large wild beast, but soon discovered that it was the cry of the cock ostrich.

Darwin found bird-nesting for ostrich eggs an easy task, the nests being very plentiful everywhere at Bahia Blanca in the months of September and October. Four nests were found to contain twentytwo eggs, while another bore twenty-seven. The egg-hunting was followed on horseback, and one day Darwin almost ran over a cock sitting on a nest. The Gauchos informed him that at times the males were exceedingly fierce, attacking all intruders, leaping at them much after the fashion of an African ostrich.

While observing the ostrich the Gauchos told our hero of another kind which they called the Avestruz Petise, which they said was smaller and more easily captured. But one of these was taken, and not until it had been skinned and cut up for the table did the young naturalist learn that it was the unknown species. The principal parts were preserved, and from these Mr. Gould described the new species, naming it after Darwin, Struthio Darwinii. The specimen is now in the museum of the Zoological Society. The rhea proper, according to Darwin,