"The habits of the Myrmecophaga jubata are now pretty well known. It is not uncommon in the drier forests of the Amazons valley. The Brazilians call the species the _Tamanduá bandeira_, or the Banner Ant-Eater; the term banner," says Mr. Bates,[138] "being applied in allusion to the curious coloration of the animal, each side of the body having a broad oblique stripe, half gray and half black, which gives it some resemblance to a heraldic banner. It has an excessively long, slender muzzle, and a warm-like extensile tongue. Its jaws are destitute of teeth. The claws are much elongated, and its gait is very awkward. It lives on the ground, but all the other species of this singular genus are arboreal. I met with four species altogether. One was the _Myrmecophaga tetradactyla_, or Little Ant-Eater; the two others, more curious and less known, were very small kinds, called _Tamanduá-i_ (_Myrmecophaga tamandua_). Both are similar in size--ten inches in length, exclusive of the tail--and in the number of the claws, having two of unequal length to the anterior feet, and four to the hind feet. One species is clothed with grayish-yellow silky hair; this is of rare occurrence. The other has a fur of a dingy brown colour, without silky lustre. One was brought to me alive, having been caught by an Indian clinging motionless inside a hollow tree. I kept it in the house about twenty-four hours. It had a moderately long snout, curved downwards, and extremely small eyes. It remained nearly all the time without motion, except when irritated, in which case it reared itself on its hind-legs from the back of a chair to which it clung, and clawed out with its fore-paws like a cat. Its manner of clinging with its claws, and the sluggishness of its motions, gave it a great resemblance to a sloth. It uttered no sound, and remained all night on the spot where I had placed it in the morning. The next day I put it on a tree in the open air, and at night it escaped. These small Tamanduás are nocturnal in their habits, and feed on those species of termites which construct earthy nests, that look like ugly excrescences on the trunks and branches of trees. The different kinds of ant-eaters are thus adapted to various modes of life, terrestrial and arboreal." In Tropical America the most remarkable representatives of the Carnivora are two great species of Felidæ: the Puma, or Cougouar (_Felis concolor_), also called the Lion of America; and the Jaguar, or Ounce (_Felis onca_), sometimes distinguished as the American Tiger.