COMMON POEPOISE.

From 4 to 5 feet long. It lives in " schools," or companies, and pursues the herrings and mackerel.

animal for its size could scarcely be conceived; and I have seen one, in the Indian Ocean, fling itself three or four times in succession out of water. like a salmon, striking the surface each time as it fell back with a report like that of a gun. No one appears to have explained whether performances of this sort are due to mere playfulness, or, as seems more probable, to the attacks of parasites or such larger enemies as sharks or “killers.” I have also seen four thresher-sharks. leaping out of water,, and falling with a loud blow on the whale’s back; but the victim lay quite still in. this case, and may in fact have been worn out before we came upon the scene. I, wish to add that I took the word of the skipper, himself an old whaling-captain, for their identity as.threshers.. The dazzling sun shone full on them, and on the sea between, and it was impossible, even with the ship’s telescope, to recognise them with any accuracy. The cachalot has a very different profile from what any one who had seen only its skull in a museum would be led to expect, for the sperm-cavity in the forehead is not indicated in the bones. ‘The structure of the head enables the animal to drop the lower jaw almost at right angles to the upper; and Mr. Frank Bullen quotes, in his fascinating “Cruise oe i ee ae ee of the Cachalot,” the

| 2 f : current belief that it does

y so to attract its prey by the whiteness of its teeth and palate. Although both fishes and cephalo-pods are very curious, even to their own destruction, it is doubtful whether the whale could not catch its food more rapidly by swimming open-mouthed through the acres of floating squid encountered all over the warmer waters of the ocean. The Narwuat, an arctic type, may be distinguished from all other cetaceans by the single spiral tusk in the left side of the head of the male. Sometimes the right tusk grows as well, aad either may attain a length of as much as 8 feet; but in the female both teeth remain undeveloped.; The.Commoy Porpoise of our own seas, distinguished by its rounded head from the equally common beaked dolphin, is too familiar to need much description. It grows to a length of 5 or 6 feet, and is dark in colour on the back and white beneath.” Its conspicuous back-fin is always recognisable when it gambols with a herd of its fellows; and a line of these sea-pigs, a mile or sc in length, is no uncommon sight, their presence inshore being indicative on some parts of the coast of the coming of east wind. The porpoise which has, Photo by A. S. Rudland & Sons.

ELLIOTT’S DOLPHIN,

One of the commoner Indian species, bo lere-kg Photo by A. S. Rudlund & dons,

RISSO’S DOLPHIN.

About 13 feet in length, found in almost all oceans,

The Dugong, Manatees, Whales, Porpoises, and Dolphins 335

like many of its group, teeth in either jaw, is a voracious feeder, preying in estuaries on salmon and flounders, and on more open parts of the coast on pilchards and mackerel. It is occasionally a serious nuisance in the Mediterranean sardine-fisheries, and I have known of the fishermen of Collioure, in the Gulf of Lyons, appealing to the French Government to send a gunboat from Toulon that might steam after Photo by A. S. Hiu/(a,u( A tivnx. the marauders and frighten BOTTLE-NOSED DOLPHIN. them away. One of the most From 8 to 9 feet long, found from the Mediterranean to the North Sea. remarkable cases of a feeding porpoise that I can recall was that of one which played with a conger-eel in a Cornish harbour as a cat might play with a mouse, blowing the fish 20 or 30 feet through the air, and swimming after it so rapidly as to catch it again almost as it touched the water.

The DOLPHIN, which is in some seasons as common in the British Channel as the more familiar porpoise, is distinguished by its small head and long beak, the lower jaw always carrying more teeth than the upper. It feeds on pilchards and mackerel, and, like the porpoises, gambols, particularly after an east wind, with its fellows close inshore. There are many other marine mammals somewhat loosely bracketed as dolphins. Kisso's DOLPHIN, for instance, a rare visitor to our coasts, has a striped skin, and its jaws are without teeth, which distinguish it from the common dolphin and most of the others. It cannot therefore feed on fishes, and most probably eats squid and cuttle-fish. The BOTTLE-NOSED DOLPHIN, a species occurring in its oil.the greatest numbers on the Atlantic coast of North America, is regularly hunted for HEAVYSIDE'S DOLPHIN, which hails from South African waters, is a smaller kind, chiefly remarkable for the curious distribution of black and white on its back and sides.

A word must, in conclusion, be said on the economic value of the whales. Fortunately, as they are getting rarer, substitutes for their once invaluable products are being from time to time is sentimentaldiscovered, and much of the regret at their extermination by wasteful slaughter and not economic. For whalebone it is not probable that a perfect substitute will ever be found. It therefore maintains a high price, though the former highest market value of over 2,000 per ton has fallen to something nearer the half. The sperm-oil from the sperm-whale, _ and the train-oil from that of the right-whales, the spermaceti out,of the cachalot's forehead and the ambergris secreted in its stomach, are the other valuable products. Ambergris is a greyish, fatty secretion, caused by the irritation set up in the whale's inside by the undigested beaks of cuttle-fish. Its market photobyA.s.iuUandd;Sons. price is about 5 per ounce. of 240 Ibs. sold for HEAVYSIDE'S DOLPHIN. A lump A small, peculiarly coloured species from the Cape. nearly 20,000.

CHAPTER XXI.

THE SLOTHS, ANT-EATERS, AND ARMADILLOS.

BY W. P. PYCRAFT, A.L.S., F.Z.S.

The very remarkable assemblage of animals we are now about to consider includes many diverse forms, bracketed together to constitute one great group; and this on account of the peculiarities of the structure and distribution of the teeth, which are never present in the front of the jaw, and may be absent altogether. Of the five groups recognised, three occur in the New and two in the Old World. All have undergone very considerable modification of form and structure, and in every case this modification has tended to render them more perfectly adapted to an arboreal or terrestrial existence. Flying or aquatic types are wanting. Whilst one great group—the Sloths—is entirely vegetarian, the others feed either on flesh or insects.

THE SLOTHS.

In the matter of personal appearance Nature has not been kind to the SLOTH, though it is certainly true that there are many uglier animals—not including those, such as some of the Monkey Tribe and certain of the Swine, which are positively hideous. The mode of life of the sloth is certainly remarkable, for almost its whole existence is passed among the highest trees of the densest South American forests, and passed, too, in

Photo by A. S. Rudland & Sons.

NORTHERN TWO-TOED SLOTH (COSTA RICA).

This is also known as Hoffmann’s Sloth. The appellation “two-toed” refers to the fore limb only The hind foot has three toes.

336

The Sloths, Ant-eaters, and Armadillos 337 a. perfectly topsy-turvy manner, inasmuch as it moves from bough to bough with its legs up in the air and its back towards the ground. It walks and sleeps suspended beneath the boughs instead of balanced above them, securely holding itself by means of powerful hooked claws on the fore and hind feet. This method of locomotion, so remarkable in a mammal, coupled with the deliberate fashion in which it moves, and the air of sadness expressed in its quaint physiognomy large-eyed, snub-nosed, and earless on which there seems to dwell an ever-present air of resignation, led the great Buffon to believe that the sloth was a creature afflicted of God for some hidden reason man could not fathom! His sympathy was as certainly wasted as his hasty conclusion was unjustified. There can be no doubt but that the life led by the sloth is at least as blissful as that of its more lively neighbours the spider monkeys, for instance. Walking beneath the boughs comes as natural to the sloth as walking on the ceiling to the fly.

The sloth sleeps, as we have already remarked, suspended from a bough. During this time the feet are drawn close together, and the head raised up and placed between the fore legs, as in the cobego, which we depicted asleep on page 170, as our readers will remember. In the sleeping position the sloth bears a striking resemblance to the stump of a lichen-covered bough, just as the cobego resembles a fruit. Thus is protection from enemies gained. The resemblance to lichen is further aided by the fact that the long, coarse hair with which the sloth is clothed becomes encrusted with a peculiar green alga a lowly form of vegetable growth which lodges in certain grooves or flutings peculiar to the Photo by L. Medium'., F.Z.S.] [North finckley. hair of this animal. Such a THREE-TOED SLOTH. remarkable peculiarity about the three-toed sloths is the fact that they have no less than ninemethod of protection is unique A amongst the Mammalia. As vertebrae in the neck, instead of seven, as is usual among mammals. the sloths sleep by day is beyond question.and feed by night, the usefulness of such a method of concealment

The strange form of locomotion of the sloths renders separate fingers and toes unnecessary, and so the fingers and toes have come to be enclosed in a common fold of skin, extending down to the base of the claws.

The sloths stand out in strong contrast to the volatile spider monkeys, with whom they share the forest; these have added a fifth limb in the shape of a prehensile tail, by which ; they movethey may suspend themselves at will. The sloths, on the contrary, have no tail deliberately, and do not require it. The monkeys move by prodigious leaps, taken not seldom by gathering impetus by swinging on their tails. : " It is a strange sight to watch this The great naturalist Bates writes of the sloth uncouth creature, fit production of these silent shades, lazily moving from branch to branch. loses his holdEvery movement betrays, not indolence exactly, but extreme caution. He never ... After watching the animalfrom one branch without first securing himself to the next. fell with a terrific crash, but caughtfor about half an hour, I gave him a charge of shot; he a bough in his descent with his powerful claws, and remained suspended. Our Indian lad 43