Chap. V. HUMMING-BIRDS. 179 



without motion, except when irritated, in which case it 

 reared itself on its hind legs from the back of a cliair to 

 which it clung, and clawed out Avith its fore paws like a 

 cat. Its manner of clinging with its claws, and the 

 sluggishness of its motions, gave it a great resemblance 

 to a sloth. It uttered no sound, and remained all night 

 on the spot where I had placed it in the morning. The 

 next day I put it on a tree in the open air, and at 

 night it escaped. These small Tamanduas are nocturnal 

 in their habits, and feed on those species of termites 

 which construct earthy nests, that look like ugly 

 excrescences on the trunks and branches of trees. The 

 different kinds of ant-eaters are thus adapted to various 

 modes of life, terrestrial and arboreal. Those which 

 live on trees are again either diurnal or nocturnal, for 

 Mp-mecophaga tetradactyla is seen moving along the 

 main branches in the daytime. The allied group of the 

 Sloths, which are still more exclusively South American 

 forms than ant-eaters are, at the present time furnish 

 arboreal species only, but formerly terrestrial forms of 

 sloths existed, as the Megatherium, whose mode of life 

 was a puzzle, seeing that it was of too colossal a size to 

 live on trees, until Owen showed how it might have 

 obtained its food from the ground. 



In January the orange-trees became covered with 

 blossom — at least to a gi'eater extent than usual, for they 

 flower more or less in this country all the year round — 

 and the flowers attracted a great number of humming- 

 birds. Every day, in the cooler hours of the morning, 

 and in the evening from four o'clock till six, they were 

 to be seen whirring about the trees by scores. Their 



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