“This Leviathan of the Pampas, as it has been justly called, became first known in Europe toward the close of the last century. In the year 1789 a skeleton was dug up, almost entire, about three miles southwest of Buenos Ayres, and was presented by the Marquis of Loreto to the Royal Museum at Madrid, where it still remains. Since that time other specimens, besides numerous fragments, have been discovered, chiefly through the zeal and energy of Sir Woodbine Parish; by the aid of which the form, structure, and consequently the habits of this clumsy and ponderous animal have been fully ascertained. The complete skeleton which forms so prominent an object of attraction in the British Museum, and which is represented in the woodcut on the adjoining page, is only a model; but it has been constructed with great care from the original bones, some of which are to be found in the wall-cases of the same room, and others in the Hunterian Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons.”[78] [Illustration: Fig. 21.--The Megatherium. From the British Museum. Length 12 feet; Height 8 feet.] Closely allied to the Megatherium, but somewhat less colossal in its dimensions, is the Mylodon. Its remains are found associated with those of the Megatherium and other great animals of the same family, in the superficial gravels of South America. A splendid specimen, which measures eleven feet from the fore part of the skull to the end of the tail, was dug up, in the year 1841, a few miles north of Buenos Ayres. It is well figured in the adjoining woodcut, which we reproduce, by kind permission of the Author, from Dr. Haughton’s admirable Manual of Geology. [Illustration: Fig. 22.--Mylodon Robustus, from Buenos Ayres.] Passing from the petrified fish, and the reptiles, and the quadrupeds, that thus come forth, as it were, from their graves to bring us tidings of an extinct creation, we must next turn our attention for a moment to Fossil Shells. These relics of the ancient world, which are scattered with profuse abundance through all the strata of the Earth’s Crust, may seem, indeed, of little value to the careless observer; but to the practised eye of science they are full of instruction. They have been aptly called the Medals of Creation; for, stamped upon their surface they bear the impress of the age to which they belong; and they constitute the largest, we may say, perhaps, the most valuable part of those unwritten records from which the Geologist seeks to gather the ancient history of our Globe.