Now I must carry you away to South America, where there are more wonders. If I were to tell you of all the singular monsters people have found in the beds of the rivers there it would make a book of itself. You know what large rivers there are in that country, and how they run for thousands of miles through almost flat plains called “Pampas.” Well, these rivers have often changed their beds by cutting new channels in the soft soil. The old dry beds of the rivers are the burying-places of some most curious animals, but I have not room to tell you about more than one of them at present. He is called the _Megatherium_, which means “great beast.” His size and strength were enormous. The largest hippopotamus looks small by his side. His leg bones are bigger than your body. He was more like the sloth than any other living animal, but he could not climb. He stood on those huge, broad hind feet, with his strong tail as a sort of third leg, and tore down the branches of the trees to feed on, or even rooted them up to get at the leaves. Standing by his skeleton in the British Museum[18] one feels quite a shrimp, and he looks strong enough to walk away comfortably with an elephant on his back. Another immense animal inhabited South America at the time, which geologists have called _Dinotherium_, or “dreadful beast.”[19] He was a relation of the mastodon, but his tusks were very curious. Instead of being in the upper jaw and turned upwards they stuck out from the lower jaw and curved downwards, giving him a very odd appearance. He most probably had a trunk like the mammoth or mastodon, but perhaps not so long. All these of course were vegetable feeders. The Tertiary period is so remarkable for the numbers of animals more or less related to elephants and spread all over the world, that we might almost call it the “elephant age,” as the oolite has been named the “reptile age.” These elephantine animals abounded in Europe, Asia, and North and South America, and though none of this kind have yet been found in Australia and Africa, I cannot help thinking they will be discovered in Africa at all events, for there is no doubt that Africa and Europe were once joined.