36 ZOOLOGICAL SKETCHES. 



martes, or pine marten, the comadrbn (Maries torquatus), 

 which haunts the rocks and hollow trees of the South- 

 Mexican sierras and sometimes visits the hen-roosts of 

 the mountain-farmers on its nocturnal excursions. The 

 creature is not much larger than a dormouse, and is 

 dreaded as an egg-sucker rather than as a chicken-thief; 

 but this same tree-rat commits frequent, and generally 

 successful, assaults upon the big tardigrade, and during 

 a visit to Cape Nuna, on the Bay of Campeche, I was 

 shown the skin of a large whity-brown sloth which had 

 been obtained under the following curious circumstances. 

 A party of lumbermen were hauling dye-wood logs from 

 a neighboring swamp, when the barking of their dog 

 and a strange hissing and grunting noise drew their 

 attention to a coppice of rhexia-bushes. On their ap- 

 proach, a pair of comadrons whisked out and bolted 

 up the next tree with a flourish of their bushy tails, 

 but in the underbrush of the coppice and half hidden 

 under a litter of twigs and fresh leaves was found a tarda 

 morena with her young, a female sloth of a rare light- 

 brown variety, the youngster dead, the mother in ar- 

 ticulo mortis. The little one's claws were still clasping 

 the neck of its dam, but its head was nearly gone : the 

 comadrons had eaten its brain and the larger part of its 

 face. The mother's back had been skinned from the 

 rump to the neck, and the hair torn off her shoulders, 

 as if the weasels had tried to get at her throat. When 

 the lumbermen skinned her the hide came off in two 



