THE SLOTH 247 



sketches of animal life, as being as good as others ; to 

 admit final causes for such ill-proportioned creatures, 

 and to find that Nature is as admirable in them as 

 in her finest works, is to take a most narrow view of 

 the world and make our own ideas of finality the tests of 

 Nature's aims." 



In this quotation we have a memorable example of 

 the errors into which the greatest thinkers may some- 

 times fall. It records a rash judgment (with respect 

 to the sloth) which the illustrious zoologist Buffon 

 allowed himself to make, and which he has recorded 

 in the thirteenth volume of his immortal " Natural 

 History." When we recall to mind how sagacious a 

 thinker the great French naturalist was, the luminous 

 suggestions, far in advance of his time, which he often 

 threw out as for example in his general comparison 

 between the animals of the Old World and the New 

 we may well wonder at his having written such a 

 passage as that above cited. However as Homer, in the 

 realm of poetry sometimes nods, so there is hardly a 

 man of science or an historian who does not occasionally 

 offer us some prosaic error. Thus Isaac Newton 

 strangely boasted that he made no hypothesis, Linnaeus 

 classed together the walrus and the sloth, Cuvier fancied 

 that from a fossil "foot" he could construct an extinct 

 Zoological " Hercules." His restorations were indeed 

 wonderful, but the principle he enunciated is none the 

 less untenable. Moreover, he strangely failed to under- 

 stand the true affinities of the barnacle, nor were 

 pouched- beasts by any means correctly appreciated by 

 him in spite of his zoological and anatomical genius. 

 Our own " Prince of Anatomists," Owen, suffered 

 ruefully from his failure to appreciate an ape's " Hippo- 

 campus Minor," while his vigorous opponent Huxley 



