On the payment of a handsome consideration to her owners, the poor captive was transferred from her unwholesome lodging in St Giles's, to the Gardens of the Zoological Society in the Regent's Park. And within the last few weeks her solitude has been cheered by the arrival of a companion from her native forests. The new-comer is in beautiful condition, though not nearly so large. He has a head decidedly shorter and stronger, and is probably not yet fully grown.
The great ant-eater seems to be scattered over a wide extent of South America—Guiana, Brazil, and Paraguay, being its places of abode. It is a stout animal, measuring from the end of the snout to the tip of the long tail six or seven feet, of which the tail takes nearly the half; so that the actual size of its body is much reduced. In Paraguay it is named Nurumi or Yogui. The former name is altered from the native word for small mouth, and indicates a striking peculiarity in its structure. The Portuguese call it Tamandua; the Spaniards, Osa hormiguero (i.e., ant-hill bear). In Paraguay it prefers sides of lakes where ants, at least termites or white ants, are abundant; but it also frequents woods. In Guiana, Mr Waterton found it chiefly "in the inmost recesses of the forest," where it "seems partial to the low and swampy parts near creeks, where the troely tree grows."[185] It sleeps a great deal, reclining on its side, as the visitor to the Gardens may frequently see it do, with its head between its fore-legs, joining its fore and hindfeet, and spreading the tail so as to cover the whole body. Huddled up under this thatch, it might almost be taken for a bundle of coarse and badly dried hay. The tail is thickly covered with long hairs, placed vertically, the hairs draggling on the ground. When the creature is irritated, the tail is shaken straight and elevated. The natives of Paraguay, like other persecutors of harmlessness, kill every specimen they meet, so that the ant-eater gets rare, and so rare is it on the Amazon that Mr Wallace, who travelled there from 1848 to 1852, honestly tells us he never saw one. He heard, however, that during rain it turns its bushy tail over its head and stands still. The Indians, knowing this habit, when they meet an ant-eater, make a rustling noise among the leaves. The creature instantly turns up its tail, and is easily killed by the stroke of a stick on its little head.[186]
The ant-eater is slow in its movements—never attempting to escape. When hard pressed it stops, and, seated on its hind-legs, waits for the aggressor. Its object is to receive him between its fore-legs; and one has only to look at its arms and claws in order to fancy what a frightful squeeze it would give. Nothing but death, they say, will make the creature relax its grasp. It is asserted that the jaguar—the tiger of South America, and the most formidable beast of the New World—dares not attack it. This Azara, with good reason, doubts. A single bite from a jaguar, or the stroke of his paw, would fracture an ant-eater's skull before it had time to turn round; for the movements of this edentate quadruped are as sluggish as those of the toothed carnivorous tyrant are rapid.
As seen in its handsome and roomy cage, the ant-eater gives us an impression of dulness and stupidity; and always smelling and listening and looking at the door where its keeper introduces its food, its mind, when awake, appears to be constantly occupied about "creature comforts." In the course of the day it laps up with its darting tongue, and sucks in through its long taper snout a dozen eggs, and almost the whole of a rabbit, chopped into a fine mince-meat. With such dainty fare, and with the anxious attention which it receives from its sagacious curators, it is scarcely surprising that it thrives; and when the warm weather comes, it will be a fine sight to see these animals enjoying the range of a paddock, which will doubtless be provided for their use, and exercising their brawny forelimbs and powerful claws in pulling down conical mounds, which may remind them of departed joys and balmier climes. Nor will it be the least charm of the spectacle that it will enable us to compare this living species with other Edentata of South America—such as the Megatherium, now only found in the fossil state, but so admirably restored by Mr Hawkins for the Crystal Palace.
We need not dwell on the admirable adaptation of the ant-eater to its position and to its few and simple wants. To those who have not studied "the works of the Lord," it may appear uncouth and unattractive. Compared with a dog, it is stupid; and alongside of a lion, it is slow. It has not the symmetry of the horse, nor the beautiful markings of the zebra and leopard. But its Creator has given it the instincts, the form, the muscular powers, and the colours which best answer its purpose. And no one can say that it is plain and ugly, who looks at its legs so prettily variegated with white and black, and its noble black collar.
Those of our readers who wish further information will find it in the Literary Gazette for October 8, 1853. In that article it is easy to recognise the Roman hand of the facile princeps among living comparative anatomists. Long may it be before either of our new acquaintances in the Garden afford him a subject for dissection; but when that day arrives, we hope that he will not delay to publish the memoir.[187]—A. White, in "Excelsior" (with additions).
RHINOCEROS AND ELEPHANT.
Two genera of the bulkiest among terrestrial beasts. Just imagine the great rhinoceros at the Zoological Gardens taking it into its head, with that little eye, target hide, and bulky bones, and other items about it, to fondle its keeper!—he was nearly crushed to death. How the great thick-skinned creature enjoys a bath!
As for the elephant, he is a mountain of matter as well as of animal intelligence. Sir Emerson Tennant in his "Ceylon," but especially in his "Natural History," volumes, has given some truly readable chapters on the Asiatic elephant. We could have extracted many an anecdote, even from recent works, of the intelligent sagacity of the Indian as well as the African elephants. The account of the shooting of Mr Cross's well-known elephant Chunie, at Exeter Change, has been very curiously and fully detailed by Hone in his "Every-Day Book." A skull of an elephant in the British Museum, shows how wonderfully an elephant is at times able to defend itself from attack. Many a shot that "rogue elephant" had received, years before the three or four Indian sportsmen, who presented its skull as a trophy, succeeded in planting a shot in its brain, or in its heart. Think of the feelings of Lord Clive's relations, at the prospect of his sending home an elephant for a pet. The good folks, not without some motive, as the great Indian ruler conceived, other than mere love for him, had been sending him presents. Samuel Rogers, who wrote the neatest of hands, records that Clive wrote the worst and certainly the most illegible of scrawls. Instead of "elephant," as they read it, their liberal relative had written "equivalent!"