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Updated: June 23, 2025
It may be further remarked, that the American porcupines are tree-climbers, and feed upon twigs and bark; in fact, lead a life very much resembling that of the sloths. The Hedgehogs, about which so much has been said, should also go with this group, though it is usual to place them among carnivorous animals.
During this time a very peculiar fauna grew up in South America, some of the types resembling nothing now existing, while others are recognizable as ancestral forms of the ant-eaters, sloths, and armadillos of to-day.
Yet, if I had to choose, I should prefer the speech that is like the winter snow- storm viz. fluent, flowing, and of generous width; and not only that, but divine and celestial. It may, I know, be said that many people prefer a short pleading. No doubt, but they are lazy creatures, and it is ridiculous to consult the tastes of such sloths as though they were critics.
The Eastern Continent had then, as now, its great pachyderms, elephants, rhinoceros, hippopotamus; South America, its armadillos, sloths, and anteaters; Australia, a crowd of marsupials; and the very strange birds of New Zealand had predecessors of similar strangeness.
Lund, a Danish naturalist, found in Brazil, not only extinct sloths and armadilloes, but extinct genera of fossil monkeys, but all of the American type, and, therefore, widely departing in their dentition and some other characters from the Primates of the old world.
This last remark deserves attention, as bearing on the question whether bright colours are serviceable to male animals from being ornamental. In one genus of sloths, it is now established, as Dr.
Amongst the almost unlimited catalogue of edible articles used by the natives of Australia, the following may be classed as the chief: all salt and fresh-water fish and shell-fish, of which, in the larger rivers, there are vast numbers and many species; freshwater turtle; frogs of different kinds; rats and mice; lizards, and most kinds of snakes and reptiles; grubs of all kinds; moths of several varieties; fungi, and many sorts of roots; the leaves and tops of a variety of plants; the leaf and fruit of the mesembryanthemum; various kinds of fruits and berries; the bark from the roots of many trees and shrubs; the seeds of leguminous plants; gum from several species of acacia; different sorts of manna; honey from the native bee, and also from the flowers of the Banksia, by soaking them in water; the tender leaves of the grass-tree; the larvae of insects; white ants; eggs of birds; turtles or lizards; many kinds of kangaroo; opossums; squirrels, sloths, and wallabies; ducks; geese; teal; cockatoos; parrots; wild dogs and wombats; the native companion; the wild turkey; the swan; the pelican; the leipoa, and an endless variety of water-fowl, and other descriptions of birds.
It was a sight to see them slink in between the useless showers, which fell like hot tears upon us sleek panthers with lolling tongues; russet-red wood dogs; bears and sloths from the dark arcades of the remote forests, all casting themselves down gasping in the palace shadows; strange deer, who staggered to the garden plots and lay there heaving their lives out; mighty boars, who came from the river marshes and silently nozzled a place amongst their enemies to die in!
It was a splendid population for all the slow, sleepy, sluggish-brained sloths staid at home you never find that sort of people among pioneers you cannot build pioneers out of that sort of material.
The transition from the "beast of Meris" on the one hand to the common typidentate mammalian ancestor, and on the other hand to the elephants, is easy, and requires no effort of the imagination. On the other hand, the whales, the sloths, ant-eaters, and armadilloes, as also the Marsupials, are called Variodentata, because we cannot derive their teeth from those of the Typidentate ancestor.
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