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been obtained in Southern Mexico. Southwards it passes throughout South America as far as Paraguay, where Rengger assures us it is common, and widely distributed. The little Two-toed Ant-eater (Cyclothurus didactylus), a purely arboreal form, is also found in Guatemala, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica, but does not range so far south as the two former species, though it extends throughout the great Amazonian valley into Peru.

The Dasypodidae, or Armadilloes, which contain the third family of American Edentates, are more numerous and more diversified in their characters than the two preceding families. The eighteen or twenty species generally recognized by naturalists may be divided into four subfamilies and seven genera. The general area of their distribution is rather larger than that of the Sloths and Ant-eaters. One Armadillo, as has been already mentioned, goes as far north as Texas, and Armadilloes are found all over the Argentine Republic down to Patagonia.

The most remarkable of the Armadilloes, and one that must form a sub-family by itself, is the little Pichy-ciego of the Argentines (Chlamydophorus truncatus), which is found in the sandy plains of the vicinity of Mendoza, and also, as has been recently ascertained, near Bahia Blanca in the eastern part of the Argentine Republic. A second species of this genus, more recently discovered (C. retusus) is met with in Bolivia.

The typical Dasypodine, consisting of about eleven or twelve species divided among four genera, are distributed all over the area of the family, south of Panama, but do not range into Central America, so far as has hitherto been ascertained.

The Giant Kangaroo (Priodon gigas), which belongs to

this sub-family, is the largest Armadillo known, measuring about three feet in the length of its body: it inhabits the forests of Guiana and Brazil. The three species of Tolypeutes, which have the power of rolling themselves up into a ball like a Woodlouse, are restricted to the pampas of Argentina and Bolivia. The members of the two other genera of Dasypodina (Dasypus and Xenurus) range from Guiana to Patagonia, but are mostly met with in the south.

Of the third sub-family (Tatusiine), distinguished from the rest of the group by the peculiar structure of the fore-feet, five species, all belonging to the genus Tatusia, are known. One of these, the Peba Armadillo, passes up through Central America into Texas, and is also widely distributed throughout South America down to Paraguay. Another species of this genus, T. hirsuta, distinguished by its thick covering of hair, occurs in Western Peru, and the remainder are found in different parts of South America.

The very curious Armadillo, described in 1872 by M. Milne-Edwards (Nouv. Arch. d. Mus., vii., p. 177, 1871) from an imperfect specimen as Scleropleura bruneti, is from the province of Ceara, North Brazil. It should apparently form a sub-family of itself.

SECTION III.-DISTRIBUTION OF THE OLD WORLD

EDENTATES

The Old World mammals, placed in the Order of Edentates, perhaps more from the want of a better position for them than for any other reason, belong to two families -the Maniida, or Pangolins, and the Orycteropodidæ, or

Aard-Vaarks. Of the Pangolins about seven species are generally acknowledged by naturalists, of which three belong to the Oriental and four to the Ethiopian Region. The species of each region belong to different sections of the genus. The Oriental Section consists of the Javan Pangolin (Manis javanica), which ranges from Burma through the Malay Peninsula to Java and Borneo; the Chinese Pangolin (M. aurita) from China, Assam, and Nepal; and the Indian Pangolin (M. pentadactyla) of India and Ceylon. Of the four species of the African section only one (Temminck's Pangolin) occurs out of the West African Sub-region, extending into Eastern and Southern Africa. Finally we have the Orycteropodidæ, or AardVaarks, which comprehend only the single genus Orycteropus, with two species entirely restricted to the Ethiopian Region, and forming one of its most characteristic types of mammal-life.

SECTION IV.-SUMMARY AND DEDUCTIONS

Table of the families and genera, showing the number of species in each Region.

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DEDUCTIONS

1. The Order Edentata contains about thirty-eight species, referable to fourteen genera and five families.

2. The Order is predominantly Neotropical, three of the families (the Sloths, Ant-eaters, and Armadilloes) with twenty-nine out of the thirty-eight species being confined to this Region.

3. Of the two remaining families one (the Aard-Vaarks) is purely Ethiopian, and the other (the Pangolins) is common to the Ethiopian and Oriental Region.

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