Both are similar in size--ten inches in length, exclusive of the tail--and in the number of the claws, having two of unequal length to the anterior feet, and four to the hind feet.One species is clothed with greyish-yellow silky hair-- this is of rare occurrence.The other has a fur of a dingy brown colour, without silky lustre.One was brought to me alive at Caripi, having been caught by an Indian, clinging motionless inside a hollow tree.I kept it in the house about twenty-four hours.It had a moderately long snout, curved downwards, and extremely small eyes.It remained nearly all the time without motion except when irritated, in which case it reared itself on its hind legs from the back of a chair to which it clung, and clawed out with its forepaws like a cat.Its manner of clinging with its claws, and the sluggishness of its motions, gave it a great resemblance to a sloth.It uttered no sound, and remained all night on the spot where I had placed it in the morning.The next day, I put it on a tree in the open air, and at night it escaped.These small Tamanduas are nocturnal in their habits, and feed on those species of termites which construct earthy nests that look like ugly excrescences on the trunks and branches of trees.The different kinds of ant-eaters are thus adapted to various modes of life, terrestrial and arboreal.Those which live on trees are again either diurnal or nocturnal, for Myrmecophaga tetradactyla is seen moving along the main branches in the daytime.The allied group of the Sloths, which are still more exclusively South American forms than ant-eaters are, at the present time furnish arboreal species only, but formerly terrestrial forms of sloths also existed, as the Megatherium, whose mode of life was a puzzle, seeing that it was of too colossal a size to live on trees, until Owen showed how it might have obtained its food from the ground.
In January the orange-trees became covered with blossom, at least to a greater extent than usual, for they flower more or less in this country all the year round--and attracting a great number of hummingbirds.Every day, in the cooler hours of the morning, and in the evening from four o'clock until six, they were to be seen whirring about the trees by scores.Their motions are unlike those of all other birds.They dart to and fro so swiftly that the eye can scarcely follow them, and when they stop before a flower, it is only for a few moments.They poise themselves in an unsteady manner, their wings moving with inconceivable rapidity, probe the flower, and then shoot off to another part of the tree.
They do not proceed in that methodical manner which bees follow, taking the flowers seriatim, but skip about from one part of the tree to another in the most capricious way.Sometimes two males close with each other and fight, mounting upwards in the struggle, as insects are often seen to do when similarly engaged, and then separating hastily and darting back to their work.Now and then they stop to rest, perching on leafless twigs, where they may be sometimes seen probing, from the places where they sit, the flowers within their reach.The brilliant colours with which they are adorned cannot be seen whilst they are fluttering about, nor can the different species be distinguished unless they have a deal of white hue in their plumage, such as Heliothrix auritus, which is wholly white underneath, although of a glittering green colour above, and the white-tailed Florisuga mellivora.
