Amongst the most interesting specimens of that collection certainly ranges
the skeleton of the above animal of a primaeval world, albeit but a cast;
the real bones, found in Buenos Ayres, being preserved in the Museum of
Madrid. To imagine a sloth of the size of a large bear, somewhat baffles
our imagination; especially if we ponder upon the size of trees on which
such a huge animal must have lived. To have placed near him a nondescript
branch (!!) of a palm, as has been done in the Museum here, is a terrible
mistake. Palms there were none at that period of telluric formation;
besides, no sloth ever could ascend an exogenous tree, as the simple form
of the coma of leaves precludes every hope of motion, &c. I never can view
those remnants of a former world, without being forcibly reminded of that
most curious passage in Berosus, which I cite from memory:
"There was a flood raging then over parts of the world.... There were
to be seen, however, on the walls of the temple of Belus,
representations of animals, such as inhabited the earth before the
Flood."
We may thence gather, that although the ancient world did not possess
museums of stuffed animals, yet, the first collection of _Icones_ is
certainly that mentioned by Berosus. I think that it was about the times of
the Crusades, that animals were first rudely preserved (stuffed), whence
the emblems in the coats of arms of the nobility also took their origin. I
have seen a MS. in the British Museum dating from this period, where the
delineation of a bird of the _Picus_ tribe is to be found. Many things
which the Crusaders saw in Egypt and Syria were so striking and new to
them, that they thought of means of preserving them as mementoes for
themselves and friends. The above date, I think, will be an addition to the
history of collections of natural history: a work wanting yet in the vast
domain of modern literature.