9 6 



ZOOLOGICAL SKETCHES. 



claws to a mantel-piece where he could warm himself 

 by putting his back against a flue of a hot-air chamber. 

 An unexpected delay prevented my return that night, 

 and when I got home the next morning I entered the 

 garret with sore misgivings about the survival of my 

 tardo. But no ; there he hung, on the very same spot 

 and in the same attitude, imbibing caloric at every pore, 

 and purring to himself in dreamy beatitude, — a tardo 

 temporarily satisfied that life was worth living. 



Like poor Lo, the sloth has no friend to rely on and 

 but little talent for self-help, but if his desires are limited 

 to sunshine and caucho-leaves he need not complain. 

 Our well-being, for all we know, may depend less on 

 the nature of our wants than on their proportion to our 

 means, and the bug whose necessities can be supplied 

 by crawling from leaf to leaf is possibly as content as 

 the bird that wings its flight from tree to tree. 



Yet this negative kind of happiness seems somehow 

 incongruous in a creature so nearly allied to the pri- 

 mates of the animal kingdom, so that even from this 

 point of view the sloth may be considered as an abnor- 

 mal phenomenon, — a combination of a vertebrate form 

 Math the mind of an insect. 



