58 MR. OGILBY'S MONOGRAPH 



life. As Baron Cuvier has very justly observed', they do not even afford characters 

 for the distinction of species ; and it is difficult to imagine how they could ever have been 

 selected for the more important office of generic diagnoses, as they have been by most 

 zoologists, without even excepting Baron Cuvier himself. In conclusion, the result of 

 these inquiries proves, that, besides their hoUowness or solidity, their permanence or 

 deciduousness, the horns furnish only one other character of sufficient influence and 

 importance to be employed in the generic distribution of the Ruminants, viz. their 

 presence or absence in the female sex. All the other characters which have been as- 

 sumed from the form, curvatures, and number of these organs are purely arbitrary, and 

 must be rejected from among the principles of a natural classification. 



II. Form of the Upper Lip. — This is another character which has a very decided 

 influence on the habits and oeconomy of ruminating animals. The Ox has the upper 

 lip terminated by a thick, heavy, naked, callous muzzle, entirely destitute of sensation, 

 and incapable of being used as an organ of prehension, from the absence of appropriate 

 contractile muscles. The Goat, on the contrary, has this part thin and finely attenuated, 

 endowed with great mobility, and adapted to every purpose of touch and prehension. 

 Now if the Ox be observed feeding, it will be found that he uses his heavy muzzle to 

 press down a quantity of grass on one side, without distinction, whilst with the tongue 

 he draws it into his mouth and crops it on the other. In the Goat this operation is 

 conducted in a totally different manner. Instead of being obliged, like the Ox, to eat 

 at random every herb or grass that happen to be mixed up together in the sward, the 

 attenuated and moveable structure of his upper hp, acting in opposition to the under 

 with the same effect as a finger and thumb, allows him to select or cull out particular 

 plants from the general mass of the herbage. He is not, therefore, an indiscriminate 

 feeder, like the Ox, hut extremely choice in his tastes ; he is not graminivorous, but 

 more properly speaking, herbivorous ; and this distinction, though it has never been 

 properly appreciated by zoologists, has not altogether escaped the notice of Dr. Paley", 

 nor even of the common people, since distinct terms are applied in all languages to 

 these two different modes of feeding. The Ox, for instance, is properly said to graze, 

 that is, to eat grass ; the Goat to nibble or browse, which hterally means, to crop the 

 leaves and tender shoots of trees and shrubs — from the old French w6rd brosse, a bush ; 

 and these habits are strictly true, not of the Ox and Goat alone, but of all other Rumi- 

 nants which possess the particular modifications of the upper hp exhibited in these two 

 species respectively. Nor is the character merely external ; it equally affects the oste- 

 ology of the skull. The intermaxillary bones in the one case are squared and turned 

 up at the extremity, with rough, thick scabrous rims to support the broad heavy 

 muzzle ; in the other they are gradually attenuated, and end in thin sharp points, with 

 smooth edges and a downward aspect ; and this is the surest test of the character, even 



' Cuv. Oss. Foss. iv. 108. • Nat. Theol., cap. xii. sec. ii. 



