ANIMALS. 637 



their destined tree, they nioiiiit it with much greater ease than 

 when they moved upon the plain. They fall to with famished 

 appetite, and, as before, destroy the very source that supplies 

 them.* 



* Mr Waterton, in his " Wiinderings in Soutli Amerira," has thrown a 

 new and more agreeable light on the character of the Sloth. We extract in 

 full his very interesting' account of this animal. 



" I>et lis now turn our attention," says he, " to the sloth, whose native 

 iiaunts have hitherto been so little known, and probably little looked into. 

 Those who have written on this singular animal have remarked that he is 

 in a perpetual state of pain, that he is proverbially slow in his movements, 

 that he is a prisoner in space, and that as soon as he has consumed all the 

 leaves of the tree upon which he had mounted, he rolls himself up in the 

 torm of a ball, and then falls to the ground. This is not the case. If the 

 naturalists who have written the liistory of the sloth had gone into the 

 wilds, in order to examine his haunts and economy, they would not have 

 rii-awn the foregoing conclusions ; they would have learned, tliat though all 

 other quadrupeds may be described while resting upon the ground, the sloth 

 is an exception to this rule, and that his history must be written wliile he 

 is in the tree. 



" This singular animal is destined by nature to be produced, to live, and to 

 die in the trees ; and to do justice to him, naturalists must examine him in 

 this his upper element. He is a scarce and solitary animal, and, being good 

 food, he i3 never allowed to escape. He inhabits remote and gloomy forests 

 where snakes take up their abode, and where cruelly stinging ants and 

 scorpions, and swamps, and innumerable thorny shrubs and bushes, obstruct 

 the steps of civilized man. Were you to draw your own conclusions from 

 the descriptions which have been given of the sloth, you would probably 

 suspect, that no naturalist has actually gone into the wilds with the fixed 

 determination to find him out and examine liis haunts, and see whether na- 

 ture has committed any blunder in the formation of this extraordinary crea- 

 ture, wliich appears to us so forlorn and miserable, so ill put together, and 

 so totally unfit to enjoy the blessings which have been so bountifully given 

 to the rest of animated nature ; for, as it has formerly been remarked, he 

 luis no soles to his feet, and he is evidently ill at ease when he tries to move 

 on the ground, and it is then that he looks up in your face with a counte- 

 nance that says, ' Have pity on me, for I am in pain and sorrow.' 



" It mostly happens that Indians and Negroes are the people who catch 

 the sloth, and bring it to the white man : hence it may be conjectured that 

 the erroneous accounts we have hitherto had of the sloth, have not been 

 penned down Avith the slightest intention to mislead the reader, or give him 

 an exaggerated history, but that these eiTors have natui'ally arisen by ex- 

 amining the sloth in those places where nature never intended that he should 

 be exhibited. 



" However, we are now in his own domain. Man but little frequents 

 these thick and noble forests, which extend far and wide on every side of 

 us. This, then, is the proper ])lai e to go in quest of the sloth. We will 

 first take a near view of him. liy obtaining a knowledge of his anatomy, 

 we shall be enabled to account for his movements hereafter, when we see 



