60 MR. OGILBY'S monograph 



SO called, as well as in the Llamas of South America ; for the grasses which compose the 

 great mass of the food of grazing Ruminants do not appear to contain the principles 

 necessary to the formation of the Bezoar. 



Now these generalizations, of such high interest in the history of the animal 

 ceconomy, and founded as they are upon philosophical inductions drawn from the ne- 

 cessaiy relations which subsist between structure and habits, ought by no means to be 

 neglected in the classification of the Ruminants. It is obvious, indeed, that any generic 

 arrangement which disregards characters so influential, can neither be consonant 

 with the principles of sound philosophy nor consistent with the natural affinities of the 

 animal kingdom. A mere artificial system, which does not aim at those high generali- 

 zations and inductions, but which is based upon such arbitrary characters as appear 

 best calculated to facilitate the knowledge of specific differences, may indeed pass over 

 them unheeded, as was done up to the time of Illiger, or employ them as mere empirical 

 diagnoses, as has been partially the case since ; but the time is fast passing away when 

 a barren catalogue of detached facts, individual differences, and specific resemblances 

 can be dignified with the name of a science. Illiger, it is true, has introduced the con- 

 sideration of the muzzle among the characters of the genera Bos, Capra, and Antilope ; 

 Lichtenstein, De Blainville, and Hamilton Smith have made use of the same character 

 in distinguishing the different subgenera into which they severally divide the artificial 

 genus Antilope ; but all these naturahsts employ it purely in a diagnostic sense, and 

 appear to have formed no distinct conception of its real value as a natural character, or 

 of the influence which it exercises over the habits and ceconomy of animal life. 



III. Of the Crumens and other Glands. — There are certain pits or sinuses which 

 open externally, especially in different parts of the head of ruminating animals, but of 

 which the functions and uses are as yet but imperfectly understood. The most remark- 

 able, as well as the most common of these, are the suborbital, sometimes called the 

 lachrymal, sinuses, or tear-pits, but which I shall distinguish by the name of crumens, 

 first I beUeve applied to them by Dr. Fleming, and in every respect a preferable term. 

 These are situated at a short distance below the inner canthus of the eye, and received 

 into a deep pit or cavity of the lachrymal bone, which is hollowed out for that purpose. 

 At their bottom is a gland opening into the crumen by a number of small apertures, and 

 secreting a viscous substance of the consistence of ear-wax. In the common Gazelle 

 (Gasella doixas) this gland is about the size of a hazel-nut, and has five apertures ar- 

 ranged in a quincunx form, through which, upon pressure, a dark tenacious clammy 

 substance oozes out in threads about the thickness of a common knitting-needle. The 

 external opening of the crumen is of various forms, sometimes large and oblong, as in 

 the Gazelles and Indian Antelope; sometimes smaller, and of a circular form, as in the 

 Thar and other Capricornes ; sometimes also the gland itself is superficial, without the 

 existence of an actual crumen, as in the Bubals ; but in all cases, the Sheep only ex- 

 cepted, the lips of the crumen are furnished with voluntary muscles, and may be opened 



