MAMMALIA. 753 



CHAPTER XXIX. 



MAMMALIA. 



(2143.) THE highest boon conferred upon the lower animals, " Hea- 

 ven's last, best gift," is parental affection. The cold-blooded Ovipara, 

 unable in any manner to assist in the maturation of their offspring, 

 were necessarily compelled to leave their eggs to be hatched by the 

 agency of external circumstances ; and their progeny, even from the 

 moment of their birth, were abandoned to chance and to their own 

 resources for a supply of nourishment. In Birds, the duties and the 

 pleasures inseparable from the necessity of incubating their ova, and of 

 providing nutriment for their callow brood, are indeed manifested to an 

 extent unparalleled in the preceding orders of Yertebrata ; but it is to 

 the Mammalia alone, the most sagacious and intelligent of all the inha- 

 bitants of this world, that the Creator has permitted the full enjoyment 

 of paternal and maternal love, has thrown the' offspring absolutely help- 

 less and dependent upon a mother's care and solicitude, and thus confers 

 upon the parent the joys and comforts that a mother only knows the 

 dearest, purest, sweetest bestowed upon the animal creation. 



(2144.) The grand circumstance whereby the entire class of beings 

 generally designated under the name of QUADRUPEDS may be distin- 

 guished from all other members of the animal kingdom is, that the 

 females of every species are furnished with mammary glands secern- 

 ing organs appointed to supply a secretion called milk, whereby the 

 young are nourished from the moment of their birth until they have 

 reached a sufficient age to enable them to live upon such animal or 

 vegetable substances as are adapted to their maturer condition. The 

 possession of these lactiferous glands would indeed be in itself a suffi- 

 ciently decisive characteristic of the whole group ; and if to this we add 

 that their visceral cavity is separated into a thorax and abdomen by a 

 muscular diaphragm, and that they breathe by means of lungs pre- 

 cisely similar to our own, we need not in this place dwell upon any 

 more minute definition of the Mammiferous Vertebrata. 



(2145.) The MAMMALIA, as we might be prepared to anticipate from 

 their importance, are extensively distributed. The generality of them 

 are terrestrial in their habits, either browsing the herbage from the 

 ground, or, if of carnivorous propensities, leading a life of rapine by 

 carrying on a bloodthirsty warfare against animals inferior to them- 

 selves in strength or ferocity. Many inhabit the trees ; some burrow 

 beneath the surface of the soil ; a few can raise themselves into the air 

 and flit about in search of insect prey ; the Otter and the Seal persecute 



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