ORDER EDENTATA. 281 



necessarily involve misery as its constant accompaniment, 

 and the absence of acute feeling is as often a source of 

 comfort and tranquillity as the presence of strength. . The 

 Sloths are deprived, it is true, of all weapons offensive. 

 They have neither strength to resist, nor speed to fly, nor 

 cunning to contrive any means of escape. Their senses 

 are too obtuse to apprise them of impending danger; 

 they cannot climb like some animals, or burrow like others. 

 Prisoners, as Buffon says, in the immensity of space, and 

 confined almost to the tree under which they were born, 

 they are exposed, helpless, to every attack of danger, and 

 every accident. They certainly remind us, in some mea- 

 sure, of those imperfect outlines of organized life, those 

 lusus that nature, with an apparent caprice, sometimes 

 produces, and which the defects of their structure soon 

 cause to be blotted out from the list of living beings. Were 

 it not for the circumstance of the Sloths inhabiting de- 

 serted regions far from the sojourn of man, and where 

 the more powerful animals have not greatly multiplied, 

 it is more than probable, if we can suppose such conse- 

 quence in any case to ensue, that their race would long 

 ago have become extinct. From their conformation they 

 appear decidedly to be the lowest of the Mammalia, and to 

 form almost a connecting link between that order and the 

 Reptile tribes. 



Still we must regard these species as perfect in their 

 kind, properly organized for the existence to which they 

 are destined ; and we must also admit a final and a wise 

 cause for the anomalies they present to our view. We can- 

 not, indeed, agree with Buffon, that species of animals 

 have been created or organized, to use his powerful lan- 

 guage, for misery. We suspect, on the contrary, that there 

 is little or no misery in the animal world, or, at least, 

 among animals in a state of nature ; among us, indeed, 

 there is a sufficiency of evil ; but it is, for the most part, 



