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CARIPI 



where I had placed it in the morning. The next day I 

 put it on a tree in the open air, and at night it escaped. 

 These small Tamanduas are nocturnal in their habits, 

 and feed on those species of termites which construct 

 earthy nests, that look like ugly excrescences on the 

 trunks and branches of trees. The different kinds of 

 ant-eaters are thus adapted to various modes of life, 

 terrestrial and arboreal. Those which live on trees are 

 again either diurnal or nocturnal, for Myrmecophaga 

 tetradactyla is seen moving along the main branches in 

 the daytime. The allied group of the Sloths, which are 

 still more exclusively South American forms than ant- 

 eaters are, at the present time furnish arboreal species 

 only, but formerly terrestrial forms of sloths existed, as 

 the Megatherium, whose mode of life was a puzzle, seeing 

 that it was of too colossal a size to live on trees, until 

 Owen showed how it might have obtained its food from 

 the ground. 



In January the orange-trees became covered with 

 blossom — at least to a greater extent than usual, for 

 they flower more or less in this country all the year 

 round — and the flowers attracted a great number of 

 humming-birds. Every day, in the cooler hours of the 

 morning, and in the evening from four o'clock till six, 

 they were to be seen whirring about the trees by scores. 

 Their motions are unlike those of all other birds. They 

 dart to and fro so swiftly that the eye can scarcely follow 

 them, and when they stop before a flower it is only for a 

 few moments. They poise themselves in an unsteady 

 manner, their wings moving with inconceivable rapidity, 

 probe the flower, and then shoot off to another part of 

 the tree. They do not proceed in that methodical manner 

 which bees follow, taking the flowers seriatim, but skip 

 about from one part of the tree to another in the most 

 capricious way. Sometimes two males close with each 

 other and fight, mounting upwards in the struggle as 

 insects are often seen to do when similarly engaged, 

 and then separating hastily and darting back to their 

 work. Now and then they stop to rest, perching on 

 leafless twigs, when they may be sometimes seen probing, 

 from the place where they sit, the flowers within their 

 reach. The brilliant colours with which they are adorned 

 cannot be seen whilst they are fluttering about, nor can 

 the diflerent species be distinguished unless they have 



