62 LECTURE II. 



invariably two claws only on the fore-feet, and 

 three on the hind*. 



The Count de Buffon, in one of those flights of 

 paradoxical eloquence in which he sometimes in- 

 dulges, is not willing to allow the common or 

 three-toed Sloth any share in contributing to the 

 general beauty in the scale of animated nature, 

 but considers it as an ill-constructed mass of de- 

 formity, calculated only for misery, which he thinks 

 is the less to be wondered at, since perhaps the 

 major part of Mankind experience a similar fate. 



" From a defect in their conformation, says this 

 author, the misery of these animals is not less con- 

 spicuous than their slowness: they have no cutting- 

 teeth : the eyes are obscured with hair ; the chaps 

 are heavy and thick; the hair is flat, and resembles 

 withered herbs ; the thighs are ill jointed to the 

 handles; the legs are too short, ill turned, and ter- 

 minated still worse : their feet have no soles, and 

 no toes which move separately, but only two 



* The three-toed Sloth exhibits a peculiarity in the structure 

 of its skeleton, unexampled by that of any other quadruped : viz. 

 that the neck has nine vertebrae or bones ; the number in all other 

 quadrupeds, and even in the two-toed Sloth, being only seven. 



