LECT. IV.] PLUCKING UP CEDARS. 123 



lazily dozing a month or two during the dry season, and then, hungry 

 and wet, in the heavy downpour of the beginning rainy season, 

 setting to work to break his fast. As far as can be judged by the tools 

 he had to work with paws a yard, and claws a foot, in length 

 the first thing to be done was to throw out a few hundredweights of 

 earth from the roots of some large tree. 



Now he changes his tactics ; he has good collar-bones, and 

 well-shaped arms for embracing; so, bear-like, he hugs the 

 tree upon which his desires are set, and, busily digging still, 

 not now with his fore, but with his hind, paws, his great weight 

 resting upon his haunches and his tail, he, with many groans, 

 sways the big tree to and fro ; at last with a great crash it falls, 

 not, however, without giving him some sense of its weight, for it 

 was a tree worthy to grow in a forest trampled upon by this atlantean 

 Sloth. 



That large crack in the outer table of his skull is of no consequence ; 

 his small brain is a long way off, and there are many empty cavities 

 to be found in a head like his; those broken tiles over the empty 

 spaces of his head will soon be mended, and what would be pain 

 to us, is to him a pleasant sense of tickling. 



But Sloths live in trees, climbing from branch to branch, supine, 

 with strongly bent wrists and hooked fingers ! Yes, I admit, such 

 Sloths as live in these degenerate days, but not the Sloth I am 

 speaking of. Think, if you can, of a Sloth, half as thick again round 

 the waist as an Elephant ; with a tail as bulky as a dray-horse's chest ; 

 and feet as large as the many-knotted roots of the gum-tree ; think 

 I say, of such a Sloth climbing trees. No, it is your poor 

 little dwarfed modern Sloth who climbs not the large Mega- 

 therium. 



Our gigantic Prospero has plucked up his cedar by its spurs; his 

 millstone-like teeth he also is a Mylodon and strong jaws will do the 

 rest; he need not hurry and he will not. He has "blessed his maw " 

 to this good hour, and will now enjoy himself. The sorrow of it is 

 that he is not to this day digging up, pulling down, and eating, the 

 trees of the forest, for us to see the sight. For death has gnawed 

 upon these huge beasts ; they are laid in the grave their eternal 

 dwelling. 



Speaking of such an one going down to the nether parts of the 



