trees to grow a long prehensile tail, as the monkeys of the New
World have done. He sleeps by day; save when woke up to eat a
banana, or to scoop the inside out of an egg with his long lithe
tongue: but by night he remembers his forest-life, and performs
strange dances by the hour together, availing himself not only of
his tail, which he uses just as the spider monkey does, but of his
hind feet, which he can turn completely round at will, till the
claws point forward like those of a bat. But with him, too, the
tail is the sheet-anchor, by which he can hold on, and bring all his
four feet to bear on his food. So it is with the little Ant-eater,
{91b} who must needs climb here to feed on the tree ants. So it is,
too, with the Tree Porcupine, {91c} or Coendou, who (in strange
contrast to the well-known classic Porcupine of the rocks of
Southern Europe) climbs trees after leaves, and swings about like
the monkeys. For the life of animals in the primeval forest is, as
one glance would show you, principally arboreal. The flowers, the
birds, the insects, are all a hundred feet over your head as you
walk along in the all but lifeless shade; and half an hour therein
would make you feel how true was Mr. Wallace's simile--that a walk
in the tropic forest was like one in an empty cathedral while the
service was being celebrated upon the roof.

In the next two cages, however, are animals who need no prehensile
tails; for they are cats, furnished with those far more useful and
potent engines, retractile claws; a form of beast at which the
thoughtful man will never look without wonder; so unique, so
strange, and yet as perfect, that it suits every circumstance of
every clime; as does that equally unique form the dragon-fly. We
found the dragon-flies here, to our surprise, exactly similar to,
and as abundant as, the dragon-flies at home, and remembering that