150 WILD BEASTS OF THE WORLD 



proverbial rolling stone ; but in dead and captive specimens this 

 curious microscopic growth naturally disappears from the hair. 



The Sloth was one of the earliest American animals to acquire a 

 reputation, but it was some time before naturalists understood how to 

 put him right side up, as it were. In his proper upside-down position 

 he is able to move about among the boughs with considerable speed ; 

 this he does entirely by clawing himself along hand over hand, never 

 jumping like so many other arboreal animals. In the thick forests he 

 frequents he can travel a long distance without ever coming to the 

 ground, by simply passing from one tree to the boughs of another 

 touching it, or by means of the many trailing creepers. His best time 

 to be on the move is in windy weather, for then, even if the trees are 

 not close enough for him in the ordinary way, the swaying of their 

 boughs brings them into contact, and he is not slow to avail himself 

 of the opportunity of changing his quarters if he desires to do so. 



The chances are, however, that he does not so desire, for he is 

 really a very lazy, sluggish animal, and does not need to move about 

 much for his food, which is all about him, consisting as it does of 

 leaves, shoots, and fruit. To bring a coveted morsel within his reach, 

 he will hook a bough towards him with his fore-legs, which are much 

 longer than the hinder ones. In the very exceptional cases when the 

 Sloth is absolutely forced to come to the ground to get to a distant 

 tree, he is seen at great disadvantage. He cannot walk at all in the 

 proper sense of the word, as he rests sprawling on the outer edges 

 of his hook-like feet, and so is reduced to hauling himself along by 

 grasping at any roughness of the ground ; on a smooth surface he is 

 almost helpless. It was from seeing him in this unhappy position 

 that the old writers formed such erroneous ideas of his miserable 

 incompetence. 



One old book says, for instance : " Its legs are thick, and awkwardly 

 placed ; so that it can only move one of them at a time, and requires 

 an hour to advance three yards. When it has, by the most laborious 

 exertions, ascended a tree, it remains there till it has stripped it of 

 everything that can be eaten, when it rolls itself into a ball, and, to 



