our minds several varieties of the animal:—
the African Anteater, the Aardvark, found
round about the Cape colony; the scaly
Anteaters or Pangolins, of which there is one
species found in Senegal and Guinea, and
two others in the Deccan, Bengal, Nepaul,
Southern China, and Formosa. Furthermore,
we were reminded of the Australian or
Porcupine Anteater, called a Hedgehog by
the colonists of Sydney. In America two
kinds of Anteater exist, the Great and the
Little, differing not only in size but also in
form and structure. These two kinds of Anteater
belong exclusively to Central and South
America. The animal we found in Bloomsbury
was the Great Anteater from Brazil;
or, to give him his full scientific honours, the
Myrmecophaga jubata. Many attempts have
been made to bring a specimen alive to Europe,
but it has never yet been able to survive the
sea passage. The Ant-bear now in Broad
Street, Bloomsbury, is therefore the first that
has been seen alive in Europe. It has been
brought over by some poor Germans, who
had found their way so far from Vaterland
as the interior of Brazil, four hundred miles
from Rio Janeiro. In Brazil the Ant-bear
is at home, and is occasionally reared in
houses as a domestic pet. The idea of carrying
home with them some specimens to Europe
as a speculation having been broached among
these Germans, one party determined upon
carrying if possible two young Ant-bears to
Paris, and another party undertook to convey
two to London. They were brought away
from home in the first month of infancy. The
two destined for Paris both died on the way.
Of the two destined for London, one died on
the way to Rio Janeiro, and was there stuffed
very badly. The other has survived the long
sea-passage, though he has grown very lean
over it, and has while we now write been
a week in London.

The poor proprietors appear to have
arrived in town with no higher ambition
than the establishment of an obscure show.
With little cash and less English they
engaged a lodging for themselves and their
infant, then five months old, at a house in
that perverted and degenerate thoroughfare.
Broad Street, Bloomsbury. There they put
a bill into the window of a small shop—their
show-room—inviting the public to come in
and see that very wonderful animal, never
before brought to Europe, the Antita (so
they spelt Anteater in their largest letters)
from Brazil. The charge for admission was
established at sixpence, with the usual
tenderness in the allowance of half-price to
children. At this hour, it is only here and
there a stray member of the London public
who has heard of the existence of this animal
among us. It was by one of those few early
discoveries that we were ourselves directed
to its dwelling-place.

On opening the shop door we found ourselves,
in proper showman fashion, shut from
a sight of the inner mystery by a check
curtain. Passing that we came into the shop,
which was divided by a little wooden barrier
into a small space for spectators, and a
small space for the proprietors of the
animal and for the animal himself, whose
den was a deal box standing on its side,
with a small lair of straw inside, and the
stuffed Anteater on the top of it. On the
straw was a rough grey hair mat, of a
circular form, or a heap of hair, which presently
unrolled itself into the form of a
magnificent tail, from under which the long nose
of the living Ant-bear was aimed at us like a
musket. Then the whole curiosity came out
to eat an egg, which it heard cracked against
the wall. In accordance with the fate common
to exiles, this Ant-bear is very thin.
Being now five months old, he stands about
as high as a Newfoundland dog. As there
were no other visitors present we had an
opportunity of becoming pretty sociable with
him and with his owners, and could feel his
long nose and his shaggy coat with the same
hand that had been called upon to feel the
small heads of the Aztecs. Here, however,
was a fit object upon which to spend our
wonder—not a deformed fellow-being, but a
work of creation hitherto unseen among us,
an example not of defect, but of perfection in
the adaptation of means to an end—from
mouth to tail an Anteater.

We have already, in some pages of this
journal, had occasion to remark, that the
feeding of one animal upon another is not in
principle a savage or a cruel thing, but the
direct reverse. Except where man has interfered
to make the life of any creature painful,
there can be no doubt that every brute
existence ends with a large balance on the
side of happiness enjoyed. All healthy animal
life—except perhaps in the least organised
animals that scarcely possess any consciousness
—pleasure, and to multiply creatures
is to multiply the sum of happiness enjoyed
upon this globe of ours; therefore the earth
is full of animated beings. The vegetable
world feeds myriads of individuals, and there
is scarcely an herb that does not feed at
least one class of animals; a race expressly
created to enjoy it; born to eat nothing else.
But if all animals ate fruits there would be a
limit set to the multiplication of kinds, and
to the aggregate increase of numbers that is
now far overpassed. Upon one animal another
lives, another upon that; so there is no waste
in the great system of creation, and ten
happy beings live in vigour where, had all
animals been vegetable feeders, there would
have been but five, and at least two of those
enduring the distresses of a slow decay. Man
is subject to diseases that arise almost entirely
from his social errors, yet they tend
to develop all his higher faculties—they give
play to his sympathies and affections, elevate
him as a moral being; at the same time
they serve as admonitions to his intellect,