SLOTH.
Reading edition
Reverend Sydney Smith on the Sloth.
Few anecdotes can be published of this curious creature, though Waterton and Burchell, or Dr Buckland, for him and his friend Bates, have recorded much that is interesting of its habits. The following bit is peculiarly happy: "The sloth, in its wild state, spends its life in trees, and never leaves them but from force or accident. The eagle to the sky, the mole to the ground, the sloth to the tree; but what is most extraordinary, he lives not upon the branches, but under them. He moves suspended, rests suspended, sleeps suspended, and passes his life in suspense—like a young clergyman distantly related to a bishop."[183]