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 t