30 ALLEN’S NATURALIST’S LIBRARY. 
insects or flies, which form part of their food, they proceed 
with extraordinary deliberation, never quickening their move- 
ments, and yet rarely, if ever, missing their prey. 
Bosman in his description of the Gold Coast of Guinea, 
gives a woodcut of the Potto, which, he says, is a “ Draught 
of a Creature, by the /Vegroes called Potto, but known to us 
by the Name of Sluggard, doubtless from its lazy, sluggish 
Nature ; a whole day being little enough for it to advance ten 
Steps forward. 
“ Some Writers affirm, that when this Creature has climbed 
upon a Tree, he doth not leave it until he hath eaten up not 
only the Fruit, but the leaves intirely ; and then descends fat 
and in very good case in order to get up into another Tree ; 
but before his slow pace can compass this, he becomes as poor 
and lean as ’tis possible to imagine: And if the trees be high, 
or the way anything distant, and he meets with nothing on his 
journey, he inevitably dies of Hunger, betwixt one tree and 
the other. Thus ’tis represented by others, but I will not 
undertake for the Truth of it; though the /Vegvoes are apt to 
believe something like it. 
“ This is such a horrible ugly Creature that I don’t believe 
anything besides so very disagreeable is to be found on the 
whole Earth; the Print is a very lively Description of it: Its 
Fore-feet are very like Hands, the Head strangely dispropor- 
tionately large ; that from whence this Print was taken was of 
a pale Mouse colour: but it was then very young, and his Skin 
yet smooth, but when old, as I saw one at L/mina in the year 
1699, ‘tis red and covered with a sort of Hair as thick set as 
Flocks of Wool. I know nothing more of this Animal, than 
that ’tis impossible to look on him without Horrour, and that 
he hath nothing very particular but his odious Ugliness.” 
