Page:A narrative of travels on the Amazon and Rio Negro.djvu/58

34 pushing a large stick under them, when they twist round it, and their head being then cautiously seized and tied to the stick, they are easily carried home. Another interesting little animal was a young sloth, which Antonio, an Indian boy, who had enlisted himself in our service, brought alive from the forest. It was not larger than a rabbit, was covered with coarse grey and brown hair, and had a little round head and face resembling the human countenance quite as much as a monkey's, but with a very sad and melancholy expression. It could scarcely crawl along the ground, but appeared quite at home on a chair, hanging on the back, legs, or rails. It was a most quiet, harmless little animal, submitting to any kind of examination with no other manifestation of displeasure than a melancholy whine. It slept hanging with its back downwards and its head between its fore-feet. Its favourite food is the leaf of the Cecropia peltata, of which it sometimes ate a little from a branch we furnished it with. After remaining with us three days, we found it dead in the garden, whither it had wandered, hoping no doubt to reach its forest home. had eaten scarcely anything with us, and appeared to have died of hunger.

We were now busy packing up our first collection of insects to send to England. In just two months we had taken the large number of 553 species of Lepidoptera of which more than 400 were butterflies, 450 beetles, and 400 of other orders, making in all 1,300 species of insects.

Mr. Leavens decided on making the Tocantins trip, and we agreed to start in a week, looking forward with much pleasure to visiting a new and unexplored district.