WANDERINGS IN SOUTH AMERICA 179 



and placed him upon the ground, in order to have 

 an opportunity of observing his motions. If the 

 ground were rough, he would pull himself for- 

 wards, by means of his fore-legs, at a pretty good 

 pace; and he invariably immediately shaped his 

 course towards the nearest tree. But if I put him 

 upon a smooth and well-trodden part of the road, 

 he appeared to be in trouble and distress: his 

 favourite abode was the back of a chair : and after 

 getting all his legs in a line upon the topmost 

 part of it, he would hang there for hours together, 

 and often with a low and inward cry, would seem 

 to invite me to take notice of him. 



The sloth, in its wild state, spends its whole 

 life in trees, and never leaves them but through 

 force or by accident. An all-ruling Providence has 

 ordered man to tread on the surface of the earth, 

 the eagle to soar in the expanse of the skies, 

 and the monkey and squirrel to inhabit the 

 trees : still these may change their relative situa- 

 tions without feeling much inconvenience : but the 

 sloth is doomed to spend his whole life in the 

 trees; and, what is more extraordinary, not upon 

 the branches, like the squirrel and the monkey, 

 but under them. He moves suspended from the 

 branch, he rests suspended from it, and he sleeps 

 suspended from it. To enable him to do this, he 

 must have a very different formation from that 

 of any other known quadruped. 



Hence his seemingly bungled conformation is 

 at once accounted for; and in lieu of the sloth 

 leading a painful life and entailing a melancholy 

 and miserable existence on its progeny, it is but 

 fair to surmise that it just enjoys life as much 



