A STEP- CHILD OF NATURE. 83 



principle to its grim extreme, the tardo contrives to eke 

 out a precarious existence. He is a strict vegetarian, 

 and contents himself with a diet which few of his fellow- 

 creatures are likely to grudge him, the leathery leaves 

 of the caucho (Nyssa euphorbia) and taxus-tree. He 

 sticks to the milky sap of his caucho-leaves, and totally 

 abstains from water and all other seductive drinks. He 

 never indulges in terrestrial rambles, but, like Simon 

 Stylites, passes his life in "aerial penance" on the 

 loftiest tree-tops of the primeval forest, where neither 

 man nor beast can accuse him of trespassing on their 

 domain. The sloth is the only exclusively arboreal 

 mammal. A hill-farmer of the Sierra Madre in the 

 State of Tabasco told me that a family of black tardos 

 inhabited a clump of shade-trees behind his house for 

 eleven years without ever condescending to terra firma 

 or even to the lower regions of their leafy domicile, and 

 often passed weeks and months on the same branch. In 

 the tierra caliente, where fig-tamarinds and euphorbias 

 grow to an enormous size, an old sloth may become 

 the hamadryad of a single tree, for, unlike most stupid 

 creatures, the bradypus is a sparing feeder, and, judg- 

 ing from the abstemiousness of domesticated specimens, 

 I should say that four or five ounces of his favorite 

 food represent about the average quantity of his daily 

 ration. 



The sloth is as chary of his motions as an orthodox 

 Trappist of his words. Sedate as if he had to give 



