M A M M A L I A — S L O T H . 



265 



error in nature ; for, even in the largest animals, and those whose Dodies 

 are relatively longer than they are thick, not one of them is found to have 

 so many. The elephant has only forty, the dog twenty-six, and the human 

 species twenty-four, &c. This difference in the construction of the unau 

 and the ai, supposes a greater distance between these two kinds than there 

 is between that of the cat and the dog, which have the same number of ribs ; 

 for the external differences are nothing in comparison with the internal 

 ones, which are the causes of the others. These animals inhabit South 

 America, and are especially numerous in Brazil and Guiana. 



Waterton gives the following account of the sloth : "This singular animal 

 is destined by nature to be produced, to live, and to die, in the trees ; and, to 

 do justice to him, naturalists must examine lim in his upper element. He 

 is a scarce and solitary animal, and, being good food, he is never allowed to 

 escape. He inhabits remote and gloomy forests, where snakes take up 

 their abode, and where cruelly stinging ants and scorpions, and swamps, 

 and innumerable thorny shrubs and bushes, obstruct the steps of civilized 

 man. Were you to draw your own conclusions from the descriptions which 

 have been given of the sloth, you would probably suspect that no naturalis; 

 had actually gone into the wilds with the fixed determination to find him 

 out and examine his haunts, and see whether nature has committed any 

 blunder in the formation of this extraordinary creature, which appears to us 

 so forlorn and miserable, so ill put together, and so totally unfit to enjoy the 

 34 



