176 WANDERINGS IN SOUTH AMERICA 



or rage, or mildness upon it. But more of this 

 hereafter. 



Let us now turn our attention to the Sloth, 

 whose native haunts have hitherto been so little 

 known, and probably little looked into. Those 

 who have written on this singular animal, have 

 remarked that he is in a perpetual state of pain, 

 that he is proverbially slow in his movements, 

 that he is a prisoner in space, and that as soon 

 as he has consumed all the leaves of the tree upon 

 which he had mounted, he rolls himself up in the 

 form of a ball, and then falls to the ground. This 

 is not the case. 



If the naturalists who have written the history 

 of the sloth had gone into the wilds, in order to 

 examine his haunts and economy, they would not 

 have drawn the foregoing conclusions ; they would 

 have learned, that though all other quadrupeds 

 may be described while resting upon the ground, 

 the sloth is an exception to this rule, and that 

 his history must be written while he is in the tree. 



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 him 

 in this 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 de- 

 scriptions which have been given of the sloth, 

 you would probably suspect, that no naturalist 



