A STEP-CHILD OF NATURE. ^ 



part. He holds his own life cheaper than that of a sand- 

 flea. 



It looks, indeed, as if neither the sustaining nor the 

 creative agencies of Nature had thought it quite worth 

 while to exert themselves for the benefit of the poor 

 tardo ; Vishnu may have deemed it a waste of trouble 

 to devise safeguards for the preservation of a life of so 

 little value even to its possessor. For what should 

 endear existence to a creature that passes its days in 

 purblind apathy, in a vegetable torpor, incapable alike 

 of mental and physical activity? The instincts of a 

 sloth are those of a cuttle-fish ; the sense of frolic and 

 the sense of comfort are not represented by any organ 

 of his cranium. He never sleeps, but his vigils are not 

 those of a wide-awake creature : his life is a long trance 

 of open-eyed inanity. Even " alimentiveness," the sole 

 solace of many brainless beings, seems to him but a 

 scanty source of enjoyment. His process of mastication 

 is slow and laborious ; he cannot gorge himself with his 

 toothless jaws. 



Still, Fate has granted the much-bereft edentate one 

 compensation, a cheap one, indeed, hut still an offset 

 to many defects : a most contented disposition. On the 

 morning of an unusually cold April day I was sum- 

 moned to a neighboring town, and took a look at my 

 tool-house menagerie before I left. Finding that the 

 female sloth had monopolized the family couch, I car- 

 ried her mate up to an empty garret and attached his 



