Part 11

M. de la Borde has also transmitted several particulars; he says, "There are two species of ant-eaters which inhabit the woods of Guiana, the one larger than the other; they run very slow, and when they swim across large rivers which is a common practice, it is easy to knock them on the head with a stick; but in the woods it is necessary to use muskets, for the dogs refuse to hunt them. The great ant-eater tears up the nests of wood-lice, which he easily discovers; he is a dangerous animal to encounter, as he gives most severe wounds with his claws, with which he successfully defends himself against the most fierce animal of this continent, such as the jaguars, cougars, &c. and with which he also kills many dogs, who are therefore afraid of him. He is said to feed on ants, for which his tongue appeared well calculated, but I found in the stomach of one a great number of wood-lice, which had just been swallowed. The females bring forth in the holes of trees, and have one at a time, and at those periods they will even attack men. The savages at Cayenne eat the flesh, although it is black and unsavory; their skins are thick and hard; they do not attain their full size before they are four years old; and the whole of their respiration is performed through their nostrils. The smaller one has whitish hair, about two inches long; it has no teeth, but its claws are very long; this, as well as the former feeds during the night; the female also has but one at a time, and they perfectly resemble each other, but the latter is more scarce to be met with than the former."

This gentleman sent me also the following remarks upon our third species. "It has bright hair, rather of a golden colour; it feeds upon ants, which adhere to its tongue; it is not bigger than a squirrel, runs very slow, and is easily taken; it fixes itself so fast to a stick or branch that it may be carried in that manner to any distance, and they are frequently found thus fixed; these, like the former bring forth but one at a time, in the holes of trees, and feed also in the night; they are not by any means scarce, though it is difficult to distinguish them on the trees."

THE LONG AND THE SHORT-TAILED MANIS.

These animals are commonly known under the name of scaly lizards; we reject this denomination; 1st, because it is a compound; 2dly, because it is ambiguous, and applied to both species; 3dly, because it is wrongly imagined; these animals being not only of another species, but even of a different class, than the lizards, which are oviparous reptiles, while the pangolin, and the phatagen, as they are called in their native countries of the east, are viviparous quadrupeds.

All lizards are covered with a sleek speckled skin, in representation of scales, but these animals have no scales on their throat, breast, or belly, the phatagen, or long-tailed manis, (_fig. 126._) like other quadrupeds, has hair on all these under parts of the body; the pangolin, or short-tailed manis (_fig. 125._) has nothing but a smooth skin without hair. The scales with which all the other parts of the bodies of these two animals are covered do not stick to the skin, they are only strongly fixed at the lower parts, being moveable, like the quills of a porcupine, at the will of the animal; they raise these scales when exasperated, and when particularly so, they roll themselves up like a ball, resembling the hedge-hog: these scales are so big, so hard, and so sharp, that they repel all animals of prey; it is an offensive armour which wounds while it resists. The most cruel and voracious animals, such as the tiger and the panther, make but useless efforts to devour these animals, they tread upon, and roll them about, but when they attempt to seize them, they receive severe wounds; they can neither destroy them by violence, nor bruize, or smother them with their weight. The fox is averse to attacking the hedge-hog when rolled up, but he forces him to stretch himself by treading on, and squeezing him with all his weight, and as soon as his head appears, he seizes the snout, and thus secures him as a prey. But of all quadrupeds, without even excepting the porcupine, the armour of the manis is the strongest and most offensive, and which animals, by contracting their bodies and presenting their weapons, brave the fury of all their enemies. When they contract themselves, they do not take, like the hedge-hog, a globose figure, but form an oblong, their thick and long tail remaining outwardly and encircling their bodies; this exterior part, by which it would seem these animals could be seized, carries its own defence; it is covered with scales equally hard and sharp as those with which the body is cloathed, and as it is convex upwards and flat below, nearly in the form of half a pyramid, the sides are covered with square scales folding in a right angle, as thick and as cutting as the others, so that the tail seems to be still more strongly armed than the body, the under parts of which are unprovided with scales.

The short-tailed manis is larger than the long-tailed kind; his fore feet are covered with scales, but the feet of the latter, and part of his fore legs are clothed with hair only. The former has also larger scales, thicker, more convex, uniformly cutting, and not so close as those of the latter, which are armed with three sharp points; he is also hairy upon the belly; the other has no hair on that part of his body, but between the scales which cover his back, some thick and long hair issues like the bristles of a hog, which are not on the back of the long-tailed species. These are all the essential differences which we have observed in the skins of both these animals, and which distinguish them from all other quadrupeds so much, that they have been looked upon as a species of monsters. From these general and constant differences, we dare affirm them to be two animals of distinct species. We have discovered their analogies and differences, not only by the inspection of three of them, which we have seen, but also by comparing all which has been observed by travellers and naturalists.

The short-tailed manis is from six to eight feet in length, his tail included, when he comes to his full growth; the tail is nearly as long as the body, though it appears shorter when the animal is young; the scales are not then so large nor so thick, and of a pale colour; the colour becomes deeper in the adult, and the scales acquire such a hardness, as to resist a musket ball. Both these animals have some affinity with the great and middle ant-eater, for like them they feed on ants, have very long tongues, narrow mouths, without apparent teeth; their bodies and tails are also very long, and the claws of their feet very near of the same length and the same form, but they have five toes on each foot, while the great and middle ant-eaters have but four to their fore feet; these are covered with hair, the others are armed with scales; and besides they are not natives of the same continent. The ant-eaters are found in America, and both the species of the manis belong to the East Indies and Africa, where the negroes call them _quogelo_; they eat their flesh, which they reckon a delicate wholesome food, and use their scales for different purposes. They have nothing forbidding but their figure; they are gentle and innocent, feeding upon insects only; they never run fast, and cannot escape the pursuit of men, except by hiding themselves in hollow rocks, or in holes, which they dig themselves, and in which they breed. They are two extraordinary species, not numerous, and seemingly useless: their odd form seems to exist as an intermediate class betwixt the quadrupeds and reptiles.

THE ARMADILLO.

When we speak of a quadruped, the very name seems to carry the idea of an animal covered with hair; as when we mention a bird, or fish, feathers and scales present themselves to our imagination, and seem to be inseparable attributes of those beings: yet Nature, as if willing to deviate from this characteristic uniformity, and to elude our views, offers herself, contrary to our general ideas, and in contradiction to our denominations and characters, and amazes more by her exceptions than by her laws. Quadrupeds, which we look upon as the first class of living nature, and who are, next to man, the most remarkable beings of this world, are neither superior in every thing, nor separated by constant attributes from all other animals. The first of those characters which constitutes their name, and which consists in having four feet, is common to lizards, frogs, &c. which differ, however, from quadrupeds in so many other respects, as to make them be considered as a separate class. The second general property, to produce young alive, is not peculiar to quadrupeds, since it is also common with cetaceous animals. And the third attribute, which seems the less equivocal, as it is the most apparent, that of being covered with hair, exists not in several species which cannot be excluded from the class of quadrupeds, since this single characteristic excepted, they are like them in all other respects: and, as these exceptions of nature are but gradations calculated to join in a general chain, the links of the most distant beings, we should seize these singular relations as they offer themselves to our view. The armadillos, instead of hair, are covered, like turtles, craw-fish, &c. with a solid crust. The manis is armed with scales like fish; the porcupine carries a sort of prickly feathers, the quill of which is like that of the birds. Thus in the class of quadrupeds, and in the most constant characteristic of these animals, that of being covered with hairs, Nature varies in bringing them near the three different classes of birds, fishes, and the crustaceous kinds. We must be cautious then in judging of the nature of beings by one single character, as that would always lead us into error; even two or three characters, though general, are often insufficient, and it is only, as we have often repeated, by the union of all the attributes, and by enumerating all the characters, that we can judge of the essential qualities of the productions of nature. A good description without definitions, an exposition more exact on the differences than the analogies, a particular attention to exceptions and almost imperceptible gradations, are the true rules, and I dare assert, the only means of estimating nature. If the time lost in forming definitions had been employed in making good descriptions, we should not at this day have found Natural History in its infancy; we should have had less trouble in taking off her bawbles, disentangling her from her swaddling clothes, and, perhaps, have anticipated her slow discoveries, for we should have written more for science; and less against error.

But to return to our subject; it appears then that there exists several species of animals which are not covered with hair among the viviparous quadrupeds. Armadillos form alone a whole genus, in which may be reckoned many distinct species, all of whom are, however, covered with a crust, resembling bone; it covers the head, neck, back, flanks, rump, and the tail, to the very extremity. The crust is covered with a thin skin, sleek and transparent: the only parts that are not sheltered by this buckler are the throat, breast, and belly, which have a white grainy skin, like that of a plucked fowl, by inspecting these parts with attention, we perceive the rudiments of scales of the same substance as the crust; the skin of these animals, even in the places where it is most soft, is therefore inclined to become bony, but the ossification is only realized on the superior and external parts of the body. This crust is not in one piece, like that of the turtle, but consists of several bands, joined to each other by membranes, which allow this armour a degree of motion. The number of these bands does not depend, as might be imagined, on the age of the animal. The young armadillos, and the adults, have the same number of stripes, of which we have been convinced by comparing them; and though we cannot be certain that all these animals do not intermix and produce promiscuously, yet it is very probable, that since the difference in the number of these moveable bands is constant, they are really distinct species, or at least lasting varieties, produced by the influence of various climates. In this uncertainty, which time alone can remove, we have thought proper to mention all the armadillos under one head, enumerating each of them as if they were, in fact, so many different species.

Father d'Abbeville seems to be the first who has distinguished them by different names or epithets, and which have been, for the most part, adopted by the authors who have written after him. He has clearly indicated six species of them: first, _tatououasso_, or, as we call it, twelve-banded armadillo; 2. the _tatouette_, or eight-banded; 3. the _encuberto_ of Marcgrave, or six-banded; 4. the _tatua-apara_, or three-banded; 5. the _cinquinçon_, or eighteen-banded; 6. _cachichame_, or nineteen-banded. Other travellers have confounded the species; but we have borrowed only the description of the _apar_ and the _cinquinçon_, having seen the other four.

All, except the _cinquinçon_ have two long bucklers, one at the shoulders, and another on the rump; they each consist of one solid piece; but the cuirass, which is also bony, and covers the body, is transversely divided, and parted into more or less moveable bands, separated from each other by a flexible skin. But the _cinquinçon_ has but one buckler, and that on his shoulder, the rump being covered with moveable bands, like those of the cuirass of the body. But we shall now proceed to a description of them particularly.

THE THREE-BANDED ARMADILLO.

The first author who described this animal was Clusius, and though his description was from a drawing only, it is evidently the same species which Marcgrave calls the _tatua-apara_; from its three moveable stripes, and its short tail; he has an oblong head, almost pyramidal; the snout sharp, small eyes, short round ears, and the upper part of the head covered with a helmet of one piece; he has five claws to each foot; the two middle claws of the fore feet are very long, and the two lateral shorter; the fifth, which projects, is the least. In the hind feet they are shorter and more even. The tail is but two inches in length, and is entirely covered with a crust; the body is a foot long, and above eight inches in its largest breadth. The cuirass, which covers it, is divided into four parts, and composed of three moveable transverse bands, which give the animal liberty to bend and contract his body in a round form; the skin between the stripes is very supple. The bucklers which cover the shoulders and rump are composed of five pieces, equally disposed in five angles; the three moveable bands betwixt these two bucklers consist of square pieces, ornamented with little scales of a straw colour. Marcgrave adds, that when he lies down to sleep, or any person touches him, he brings his fore feet together, lays his head under his belly, and bends himself so perfectly round that he looks more like a sea-shell than a terrestrial animal. This contraction is made with the assistance of two great muscles on the sides of his body, and the strongest man finds it difficult to force him with his hands to stretch out. Piso, and Ray, have added nothing to the description of Marcgrave, but it is singular that Seba, who has given us a description and figure of this animal evidently copied after Marcgrave, not only not mentions that author, but tells us, "that no naturalist has known this animal, that it is extremely scarce, and found in the most remote countries of the East Indies," when in fact this animal is well described by Marcgrave, and the species is well known, not indeed in the East Indies, but in America, where it is very common. The only real difference between the description of Seba, and that of Marcgrave is, that the latter gives the animal five claws to each foot, and Seba allows him but four, and yet they evidently speak of the same animal.

_Engraved for Barr's Buffon._

Fabius Calumna has given the description and figure of an armadillo contracted into a ball, which seems to have had four moveable bands, but as this author was absolutely unacquainted with the animal, whose skin or shell he has described, as he did not even know the name of the armadillo, though mentioned by Bellon fifty years before, but gave him a Greek name, (_cheloniscus_); besides, as he confesses, that the skin had been pasted together, and wanted several pieces, we do not see ourselves authorised to pronounce, as our modern nomenclators have done, that a species of armadillo, with four moveable bands, exists in Nature; and more especially since these imperfect indications given in 1606, by Fabius Calumna, no mention is made of it in the works of any naturalists; and, if he really did exist, he certainly would have been introduced into some cabinets, or have been observed by some travellers.

THE SIX BANDED.

This species (_fig._ 127) is larger than the former; he has the upper part of the head, neck, body, legs, and tail, covered with a very hard crust, composed of several large pieces, elegantly disposed. He has a buckler on each shoulder, and another on the rump, each of which are in one piece; only there is beyond the buckler on the shoulders, and near the head a moveable band, which enables the animal to bend its neck. The buckler on the shoulders is formed by five parallel rows, composed of pieces which represent five angles, with an oval in each; the cuirass on the back, that is the part betwixt the two bucklers, is divided into six bands, which are united together and to the bucklers, by seven joints of a supple and thick skin. These bands are composed of large square pieces; from the skin of these joints some white hairs issue out, like those on the breast and belly; all these inferior parts are covered only by a grainy skin, and not by a crustaceous substance like the upper. The buckler on the rump has a border, the mosaic work of which is similar to that of the moveable bands, and the rest consists of pieces like those of the bucklers of the shoulders. The crust of the head is long, broad, and consists of one piece, extending to the moveable band on the neck. He has a sharp muzzle, small and hollow eyes, a narrow and sharp tongue; the ears are without hair, naked, short, and brown, like the skin of the joints; he has eighteen teeth in each jaw, five claws to each foot, long, in a round form, and rather narrow; the head and the snout are like those of a pig, the tail is thick at its origin, diminishing gradually towards the extremity, where it is very slender and round. The colour of the body is a reddish yellow; the animal is commonly thick and fat, and the male has the sexual organ very visible; he digs into the ground with great facility with his snout and claws; he dwells in the day-time underground, and only goes out towards the evening to seek for food; he drinks often, lives upon fruit, roots, insects, and birds, when he can catch them.

THE EIGHT BANDED.

This is not so large as the last, he has a small head, a sharp snout, the ears erect, and rather long, the tail still longer, and the legs rather short. He has small black eyes, four toes on the fore-feet, and five on those behind; the head is covered with a helmet, the shoulders and rump with shields, and the body with a cuirass composed of eight moveable bands connected together, and with the bucklers, by nine joints of a flexible skin; the tail has also a similar number of bands. The colour of the cuirass on the back is iron grey, and on the flanks and tail of a light grey with spots of iron grey. The belly is covered with a whitish skin, grainy and hairy. The individual of this species, described by Marcgrave, had a head three inches long, the ears near two, the legs about three, the two middle toes of the fore-feet an inch; the body from the neck to the origin of the tail seven inches, and the tail nine inches in length; the bucklers had small white spots; the moveable bands were marked by triangular figures; this crust was not hard, being penetrable to the smallest shot which would kill the animal, whose flesh is very white, and good to eat.

THE NINE BANDED.

Nieremberg has described this animal very imperfectly: Wormius and Grew have described him much better. The individual which Wormius mentioned was adult, and one of the largest of the species; that of Grew was younger and smaller. We shall only give their descriptions as far as they agree with our own specimens. Besides, it may be presumed, that this nine-striped armadillo is not really a distinct species from the eight, which he resembles in every other respect. We have two eight-banded armadillos which are dried, and seem to be both males; we have seven or eight with nine bands, one well preserved, which is a female, and the others are so dried up that we could not discern the sex. It is probable, therefore, that the eight-banded is the male and the nine-banded the female. But this is merely a conjecture for we shall give in the following article the description of two armadillos, one of which has more rows than the other upon the buckler on the rump, and yet they are so alike in every other respect, that one should be inclined to think this difference arises only from that of the sex, for it is not improbable, that greater numbers of these moveable bands may be necessary to facilitate the gestation and delivery of the female. The head of the armadillo, the skin of which Wormius has described, was five inches from the end of the snout to the ears, and eighteen inches from the ears to the tail, which last was a foot in length, and composed of twelve rings. The head of that described by Grew was three inches, the body seven and a half, and the tail eleven; the proportions of the head and body agree, but the difference of the tail is too great; and it is probable that the tail of that described by Wormius had been broken, for it should have exceeded a foot in length. As in this species the tail diminishes to the size of an awl, and is, at the same time, very brittle; few of the skins therefore have the whole tail preserved as that described by Grew.

THE TWELVE BANDED.

This seems to be the largest of the species. He has a larger and broader head, and a snout not so sharp as the others; his legs and feet are thicker, and his tail has not any crust; a particularity which is alone sufficient to distinguish this species from all others. He has five toes on each foot, and twelve moveable bands. The buckler on the shoulders is formed of five or six rows, each composed of large quadrangular pieces. The moveable bands are also formed of large pieces, almost square; those which compose the buckler on the rump are like those on the shoulder. The helmet of the head consists of large irregular pieces. Between the joints of the moveable bands and in the other parts of the armour, there appear some hairs like the bristles of a hog; there are also upon his breast, belly, legs, and tail, round scales, almost imperceptible, hard and polished like the crust, and between which are small tufts of hair. The pieces which compose the helmet, the two bucklers, and the cuirass, being proportionally larger and less in number in this than in other armadillos, evidently prove he is the largest of the kind. The head of that from which we took this description was seven inches long, and the body twenty-one.

THE EIGHTEEN BANDED.