QUEER PHASES OF ANIMAL LIFE. 597 



gish bears may take a morning ramble through the branches of his 

 chosen tree, and, if they espy the poor leaf-eater, his capture follows 

 as a matter of course ; they need not pursue him, they can collar him 

 at their leisure ; a hungry bear collects a family of sloths as he would 

 gather a bnnch of grapes. 



Still, Fate has granted the much-bereft edentate one compensation 

 a cheap one, indeed, but still an offset to many defects a most 

 contented disposition. On the morning of an unusually cold April 

 day I was summoned to a neighboring town, and took a look at my 

 tool-house menagerie before I left. Finding that the female sloth had 

 monopolized the family couch, I carried her mate up to an empty gar- 

 ret, and attached his claws to a mantel-piece, where he could warm 

 himself by putting his back against a flue of a hot-air chamber. An 

 unexpected delay prevented my return that night, and Avhen I got 

 home the next morning I entered the garret with sore misgivings 

 about the survival of my tardo. But, no ; there he hung, on the very 

 same spot and in the same attitude, imbibing caloric at every pore, 

 and pun-ing to himself in dreamy beatitude a tardo temporarily satis- 

 fied that life was worth living. 







A striking contrast to the sluggishness of the sloth is presented by 

 Dr. Oswald's description, in another part of the book, of the Honuman 

 monkey at play. 



Without wings, agility could hardly go farther ; from the stand- 

 point of a practical anatomist, it is almost inconceivable how muscles 

 and sinews, apparently so very similar to our own, can execute such 

 movements. Without the least visible effort, the marvelous half-bird 

 darts through the air in a wide zigzag, merely touching a branch here 

 and there ; upward suddenly with a series of mighty swings, regard- 

 less and apparently forgetful of obstacles; down with a gradationed 

 spring that looks like a single leap ; up again with a flying rebound 

 through a tangle-work of branches, yet at the same time watching his 

 comrades, aiming and parrying slaps or dodging a shower of missiles ; 

 then, wdth a sudden grab, a quick contraction of the hind-legs, and the 

 acrobat sits motionless on a projecting branch, watching a movement 

 in the grass that has not escaped his eye during his headlong evolu- 

 tions. 



A bat is a living anachronism ; there is something obsolete and 

 paradoxical in every part of its organization. Skin wings were quite 

 in vogue in the days of the Devonian monster -period, but have gone 

 out of fashion among the representative creatures of our latter-day 

 world ; and it is a curious fact that all winged mammals have become 

 nocturnal, as if they could not compete with the talents of their day- 

 light contemporaries. The winged lemur (Galeopithecus volans), the 

 flying-fox, and the flying-squirrel, are all moonshiners, and dread sun- 



