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 bei^ig 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- 
