] It yields; the roots fly up; the earth is scattered
wide upon the surrounding foliage; the tree comes down with a thundering
crash, cracking and snapping the great boughs like glass; the frightened
insects swarm out at every orifice; but the huge beast is in upon them;
with his sharp hoofs he tears apart the crusty walls of the earth-nests,
and licks out their living contents, fat pupae, eggs and all, rolling
down the sweet morsels, half sucking, half chewing, with a delighted
gusto that repays him for all his mighty toil.

While the heavy giant is absorbed in his juicy breakfast, see, there
lounges along his neighbour, the Macrauchen. Equally massive, equally
heavy, equally vast, equally peaceful, the stranger resembles a huge
rhinoceros elevated on much loftier limbs; but his most remarkable
feature is an enormously long neck, like that of the camel, but carried
to the altitude of that of the giraffe. Thus he thrusts his great muzzle
into the very centre of the leafy trees, and gathering with his
prehensile and flexible lip the succulent twigs and foliage, he too
finds abundance of food for his immense body, in the teeming vegetation,
without intruding upon the supply of his fellows.

And what enormous mass is suddenly thrust up out of the quiet water of
yonder igaripe? A hoarse, hollow grunt, as it comes up, tells us that
it is alive, and now we discern that it is the head of an animal--the
Toxodon. Half hidden as it is under the shadow of the fan-palms, and the
broad, arrowy leaves of the great arums that grow out of the lake, we
see the little piggish eyes, set far up in the great head, and wide
apart, peeping with a curious union of stupidity and shrewdness; the
immense muzzle and lips; the broad cheeks armed with stiff projecting
bristles; and, as the creature opens its cavernous mouth to seize a
floating gourd, an extraordinary array of incurving teeth, strangely
bowed so as to make a series of arches of immense power. Now, with his
strong front teeth, he tears up the great fleshy arum-roots from the
clay of the bank, and grinds them to pulp; and now, with another grunt,
the vast bristly head sinks beneath the water, and we see it no more.
Hundreds of other creatures are straying around,--sloths, bats, and
monkeys, and birds of gay plumage, on the trees; ant-eaters and cavies,
lizards and snakes, on the ground; butterflies and humming-birds
hovering in the air; tapirs and turtles and crocodiles in the
waters;