so painted jaguar did as he was told, especially about leaving them alone; but the curious thing is that from that day to this, o best beloved, no one on the banks of the turbid amazon has ever called stickly-prickly and slow-solid anything except armadillo. there are hedgehogs and tortoises in other places, of course (there are some in my garden); but the real old and clever kind, with their scales lying lippety-lappety one over the other, like pine-cone scales, that lived on the banks of the turbid amazon in the high and far-off days, are always called armadillos, because they were so clever.