150 MAMMALIA. 



ORDER VII. 



PACHYDERMATA. 



The Edentata terminate the species of unguiculated animals, and we 

 have just seen that there are some of them whose nails are so large, and 

 so envelope the extremities of the toes, as to approximate them, in a cer- 

 tain degree, to the hoofed animals. They still, however, possess the 

 faculty of bending these toes round various objects, and of seizing wuth 

 more or less force. The total deficiency of this faculty characterizes the 

 hoofed animals. Using their feet merely as supporters, they are never 

 furnished with clavicles; their fore-arm is always in a state of pronation, 

 and they are reduced to the necessity of feeding on vegetables. Their 

 forms, like their habits, present much less variety than those of the Un- 

 guiculata, and they can hardly be divided into more than two orders, 

 those which ruminate, and those which do not ; but these latter, which we 

 designate collectively by the term Pachydermata, admit of a subdivision 

 into families. 



The first is that of the Pachydermata, which have a proboscis and 

 tusks. 



FAMILY I. 



PROBOSCIDIANA.* 



The Proboscidians have five toes to each foot, very complete in the 

 skeleton, but so encrusted by the callous skin which surrounds the foot, 

 that their only external appearance is in the nails attached to the edge of 

 this species of hoof. They have no canines or incisors, properly so called, 

 but in their incisive bone are implanted two tusks, which project from the 

 mouth, and frequently attain to an enormous size. The magnitude re- 



• The Proboscidians have various affinities with certain Rodentia; 1, their great 

 incisors; 2, their grinders frequently composed of parallel laminae; 3, the form of 

 several of their bones, &c. 



absence of a nipple has been offered as a reason against the supposition that the 

 young of this creature are fed from the mother's breast; but anatomical examinations 

 have demonstrated that such appendages are by no means indispensable to such a 

 process, and the manner in which the breast of the Ornithorhyncus is formed justi- 

 fies the belief, that by muscular pressure against the ribs alone, the milk, or what- 

 ever be the nature of the fluid, may flow out in sufficient quantity for the wants of 

 tlie young. A warm controversy is still carried on between M. Geoffroy and Mr. 

 Owen, but all the new facts which are now in course of being collected respecting 

 this animal, seem to strengthen the opinion of its being mannniferous. — Eng. Ed. 



