“Some years ago I kept a Sloth for several months. I often took him out of the house and placed him on the ground, in order to have an opportunity of observing his motions. If the ground were rough he would pull himself forward by means of his fore-legs, at a pretty good pace, and he invariably shaped his course towards the nearest tree; but if I put him upon a smooth and well-trodden part of the road, he appeared to be in trouble and distress. His favourite abode was the back of a chair, and often getting all his legs in a line upon the topmost part of it, he would hang there for hours together. The Sloth, in its wild state, spends its whole life upon trees, not upon the branches, but under them; he moves suspended from the branch, he rests suspended from it, and he sleeps suspended from it; hence his seemingly bungled conformation is at once accounted for. One day, crossing the Essequibo, I saw a large Two-toed Sloth on the ground upon the bank, and although the trees were not twenty yards from him, he could not make his way through the sand in time enough to make his escape before we landed. He threw himself on his back and defended himself with his fore-legs. I took a long stick and held it for him to hook on, and then conveyed him to a high and stately Mora. He ascended with wonderful rapidity, and in about a minute he was almost at the top of the tree. He now went off in a side direction, and caught hold of the branch of a neighbouring tree, and then proceeded towards the heart of the forest.” At Santos, in Brazil, in 1826, Mr. Burchell kept a tame Sloth, a _Bradypus tridactylus_, which at the end of two months pined and died. It fed exclusively on the buds and leaves of a species of _Cecropia_, a tree having a slender stem of thirty or forty feet long, with horizontal branches, hollow internally, and naked, except at the extremities. It ate only the young shoots and terminal buds of the unexpanded leaves, rejecting the old leaves on the boughs, which were brought to it daily. It was always perfectly silent, and its countenance and manners were most expressive of melancholy. It fed by day, and slept much; being kept in a room, it sat upright upon its short tail, embracing the legs of a chair with its arms and legs.