248 TYPES OF ANIMAL LIFE 



stood sponsor for that never-to-be-forgotten creature of 

 the fancy " Bathybius." 



Similarly, Buffon was led by his imagination, to be at 

 once unjust to Nature and to such a marvellous produce 

 of Nature as the sloth. That animal is truly no less 

 admirable in its organisation than is any which Buffon 

 would have regarded as being one of Nature's " finest 

 works/' and far from being an imperfect and tentative 

 sketch of animal life, it is a fully completed study of 

 perfect adaptation of structure to need. 



The fact is, no animal can be correctly appreciated by 

 us if we do not well understand the circumstances of its 

 being, its surrounding conditions. Each creature's struc- 

 ture is an expression and manifestation of that interplay 

 of influences and activities between its own being and 

 its environment, which constitutes its Life. Buffon mis- 

 took the sloth's organisation because he was ignorant of 

 the nature of the region it inhabits, namely the vast 

 forest region of South America. The creatures of that 

 region are formed exceptionally for arboreal life, as we 

 have already seen with respect to the spider-monkeys 

 and howling-monkeys. In that immense continent of 

 foliage, Brazil, we have indeed a land which has pro- 

 duced, as it were, a great symphony of organic harmony 

 composed in the forest " key." There we find, specially 

 modified for an existence amidst trees, many orders of 

 animals which elsewhere are not so modified, and above 

 all the sloth, which is a creature fitted for the forest, as 

 the camel for the desert, the dolphin for the water, or 

 the eagle for the air. The colour of the abundant 

 verdure even gains upon the animal world itself, and 

 snakes and lizards, frogs and insects wear a livery of 

 green. Not only colour but even form, may be thus 

 affected, and the strange leaf-insects crawl above each, 



