Page:The Zoologist, 1st series, vol 1 (1843).djvu/311

Rh no less than six—enumerated in Professor Owen's list may prove to be synonymous, and thus a new field of scientific research may become obscure at the very threshold of the enquiry.

In the history of every land there is a point at which the real merges in the ideal—at which fact is lost in fiction; and it is thus in the history of animals. That of the sloth commences with the publication of Waterton's ' Wanderings in South America;' all before that date is fable, or mixed with fable, all after it is fact; and the contrast is not greater between the humming-bird and the tortoise, than between the sloth of fact and the sloth of fiction. The history is familiar to every naturalist, or we should quote it. Let us turn to Dr. Lund's account of the living sloth.

In this account there is much that is excellent, but we doubt whether the Doctor ever saw a sloth climbing a tree, except in imagination, or he would never have omitted to notice that it ran below instead of above the boughs, and thus effectually counteracted what he terms