THREE-TOED SLOTH. 155 



ticularly on leaves and fruit. Its voice is said to 

 be so inconceivably singular, and of such a mourn- 

 ful melancholy, attended, at the same time, with 

 such a peculiarity of aspect, as at once to excite a 

 mixture of pity and disgust; and, it is added, that 

 the animal makes use of this natural yell as its best 

 mode of defence ; since other creatures are fright- 

 ened away by the uncommon sound. This, how- 

 ever, is far from being its only refuge; for so 

 great is the degree of muscular strength which it 

 possesses, that it is capable of seizing a dog with 

 its claws, and holding it, in spite of all its efforts to 

 escape, till it perishes with hunger; the Sloth it- 

 self being so well calculated for supporting ab- 

 stinence, that the celebrated Kircher assures us 

 of its power in this respect having been exem- 

 plified by the very singular experiment of suffer- 

 ing one, which had fastened itself to a pole, to re- 

 main in that situation, without any sustenance, up- 

 wards of forty days. This extraordinary animal 

 is an inhabitant of the hotter parts of South Ame- 

 rica. It is nearly as large as a middle-sized dog. 



VAR. ? 



The stiff and awkward representation of this 

 animal in Edwards's gleanings of Natural History, 

 was executed from a dried specimen, which had 

 been set up in that position. Edwards observes, that 

 all the figures which he had seen were erroneous, 

 in representing the hair as growing to the very 

 roots of the claws ; whereas, in the abovemen- 



