136 



WANDERINGS IN SOUTH AMERICA. 



render the stuffed specimens in the different museums 

 horrible to look at. The defects in the legs and feet 

 would not be quite so glaring, being covered with hair. 



I had paid great attention to this subject 

 birds and for above fourteen years ; still it would not 

 do : however, one night, while I was lying 

 in the hammock, and harping on the string on which 

 hung all my solicitude, I hit upon the proper mode 

 by inference ; it appeared clear to me that it was the 

 only true way of going to work, and ere I closed my 

 eyes in sleep, I was able to prove to myself that there 

 could not be any other way that would answer. I 

 tried it the next day, and succeeded according to ex- 

 pectation. 



By means of this process, which is very simple, we 

 can now give every feature back again to the animal's 

 face, after it has been skinned; and when necessary, 

 stamp grief, or pain, or pleasure, or rage, or mildness" 

 upon it. But more of this hereafter. 



Th SI th ^^^^ attention to the 



Sloth, whose native haunts 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 form of a ball, and then falls 

 to the ground. This is not the case. 



If the naturalists who have written the history of 

 the sloth had gone into the w^ilds, in order to examine 

 his haunts and economy, they would not have drawn 

 the foregoLQg conclusions ; they would have learned, 



