THREE-TOED SLOTH. 153 
drag themselves up a tree with much labour and 
pain : their cry and interrupted accents they dare 
only utter during the night All these circum- 
stances announce the misery of the Sloths, and 
recal to our minds those defective monsters^ those 
imperfect sketches of nature^ which, being hardly 
endowed with the faculty of existence, could not 
subsist for any length of time, and have accord- 
ingly been struck out of the list of beings. If 
the regions inhabited by the Sloths were not de- 
sert, but had been long occupied by men and the 
larger animals, these species would never have de- 
scended to our times ; but would have been anni- 
hilated, as in some future period will be the case. 
We formerly remarked, that every thing that pos- 
sibly could be did really exist : of which the Sloths 
are a striking example. They constitute the last 
term of existence in the order of animals endowed 
with flesh and blood. One other defect added to 
the number would have totally prevented their 
existence. To regard those bungled sketches as 
beings equally perfect with others, to call in the 
aid of final causes to account for such dispropor- 
tioned productions, and to make Nature as bril- 
liant in these as in her most beautiful animals, is 
to view her through a narrow tube, and to substi- 
tute our own fancies for her intentions. Why 
should not some animals be created for misery, 
since in the human species the greatest number of 
individuals are devoted to pain from the moment 
of their existence? Evil, it is true, proceeds more 
from ourselves than from Nature. For a single 
