Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume XV.djvu/115

 SLOTH 107 As stated Under PLUM, this is thought to be the original of all the cultivated European va- rieties of that fruit. The sloe is sometimes used as a hedge plant in Europe, and is planted Sloe or Blackthorn (Prunus communis). around trees in parks to protect them while young from injury by animals ; it is sometimes seen in this country in collections of shrubs, its chief merit as an ornament being its early lowering. The wood is hard, heavy, and dark- colored, takes a fine polish, and is used for mdles to tools, flails, teeth to rakes, and the ! ; upright shoots make favorite walking ticks. The leaves when dried are regarded as more like tea than any other substitute; they were at one time largely collected for the adulteration of tea in England, but this is now forbidden under a heavy penalty. The fruit when mellowed by frost is eaten in some parts of Europe, and is made into a conserve; it's expressed juice is used in Germany to mark lothing, it being nearly indelible, and in Eng- id it forms the basis of " British port." SLOTH, the name of the edentate mammals )f the family tardigrada (111.) and genus Irady- s (Linn.) ; both the family and generic names re derived from the extreme slowness of the lit; it is le paresseux of the French. The is small, rounded, flat, and truncated in ront ; the jaws very short and the face very ittle projecting beyond the line of the crani- um ; the malar bone gives off a zygomatic pro- cess which runs backward and passes above the corresponding one of the temporal bone without touching it, a second process descend- ing outside the lower jaw, which is very strong. The fore legs are much longer than the hind, and all the toes end in long curved claws, chan- lelled underneath, the bones firmly united together and the claws naturally turned in against the soles; the fore feet have either three or two toes, and the hind feet three toes; the latter are articulated obliquely on the leg, so that only the exterior edge touches the ground, of course making progression on a level surface very awkward ; the pelvis is so [ wide and the thighs so laterally directed that the knees cannot be brought together. The ears are very short, and concealed under the hair, which is dry, harsh, and coarse. The axillary and iliac arteries, instead of pursuing their usual course down the limbs as single vessels, suddenly subdivide into from 40 to 60 small trunks of equal size, freely anastomosing with each other, looking somewhat like a mass of varicose veins, and distributed chiefly to the muscles ; the arrest of the circulation by pres- sure on a single trunk is thus prevented, and its retardation permits slow and long continued contraction of the muscles of the arms and legs. The stomach is divided into four cavi- ties without folds, the intestine is shorthand the caecum absent; the mammas are two, and pectoral ; there is a common cloaca, as in birds, for the expulsion of the urine and fasces. The dental formula is fif, the teeth being simple, separated, nearly cylindrical, without roots, with an undivided hollow base contin- ually growing as they are worn by use, and composed of dentine and cement without en- amel ; there are no incisors ; the anterior mo- lars are very small in the three-toed sloth, but in the two-toed are long, pointed, resembling canines, and the lower placed behind the up- per. The tail is very short, or absent. The sloths were considered by the early naturalists as imperfect and deformed creatures ; but in the trees, their natural home, their peculiari- ties of structure are as admirably adapted for their convenience and enjoyment as in any other animal ; the fore limbs have great free- dom of motion, and all are so constructed that by means of the claws they suspend them- selves to the branches and hang for a long time, and even sleep, back downward. They are rarely seen on the ground, for the reason that they can pass from one tree to another by the interlocking branches for miles in the thick forests of South America, which they inhabit from Guiana to Paraguay, some species extend- ing to Peru, and according to some authors into Central America. They are rarely more than 2 ft. long, and their hair resembles in color the bark of the trees -upon which they live ; the food is entirely vegetable, the leaves and twigs of trees. They have one young one at a time, which clings to the mother's back, hiding among the hair ; the native name is a*', from their feeble plaintive cry; they are re- markably tenacious of life, and apparently un- conscious of pain. Linnaeus gave the name of B. tridactyhis to a three-toed sloth, under the impression that there was only one species thus characterized, whereas Wagner describes several in the Archiv fur NaturgescliicJite for 1850. The animal referred to by Linnaeus is grayish, with the body 14 in. long, the head about 3, the tail 1, the fore limb 11, the hind G, and the claws 2 to 2-J ; it has 9 cervical ver- tebrae, and 14 ribs on each side, of which 9 are true ; the thumb and little finger are rudimen- tary and hidden under the skin ; there is a ru-