58 BULLETIN NO. yII. 
geneous in essential characters. From the weasel, to the bear 
or lion, we may look without finding any animal so peculiar 
that there is any difficulty in recognizing affinities with its fel- 
lows. 
The typical carnivore has a more or less triangular head 
with pointed muzzle, armed with long vibrisse. The ears are 
pointed and movable, while the eyes are large, or at least of 
fair size, (the bears do not conform to this type), and are di- 
rected forward. The body is powerful, if not graceful and 
lithe, as in most cases. Limbs are of moderate length and 
adapted for progression, (but rarely useful for prehension). 
The claws are powerful, and in the highest groups retractile, 
so that the keen points and edges are not worn dull by walk- 
ing. This is accomplished by the peculiar position of the last 
bone of the toe. There are usually five toes on each foot and 
the reduction never affects more than one toe on a foot. 
Though the bones of the fore arm are not united, they are nev- 
ertheless not adapted for rotary motions of pronation, etc., in 
most groups. 
The bears touch the ground with the whole sole of each foot, 
or are, in other words, plantigrade. Between this condition, 
and that of the cat, where only the toes touch the ground in 
walking, or when progression is entirely digitigrade, there is 
a complete series of intermediate links. The former method is 
held to be the primitive one for the order and permits of great 
freedom in the use of the extremities, but it is also accompa- 
nied with a certain heaviness and even clumsiness, which is 
avoided by the digitigrate foot. An animal which must run 
swiftly, or spring upon its prey from a distance, requires the 
additional leverage furnished by a long heel. 
The brain is well developed, having several convolutions and 
a large corpus callosum. The cerebral hemispheres do not 
overlap the cerebellum, however. The development of the 
organs of sense reaches the maximum in this order. The eyes 
* are usually specially adapted to nocturnal vision, so that, al- 
though the contractile iris adjusts the eye to strong daylight, 
the darkness of night is no obstacle to the chase of prey. The 
following anatomical characters may be added. The digestive 
tract is comparatively simple, the stomach never being com- 
posed of more than one chamber, and the ccecum, if present, 
is small. The clavicles are absent or very rudimentary, being 
most highly developed in the cats. Theatlas vertebra has two 
large transverse processes. The zygomatic arches are usu- 
