180 



MAMMALIA. 



on the organisation generally, and the habits indicated 

 by that organisation. The reason of this must be 

 apparent to every reader ; we want the name as a 

 correct index to every thing named by it, as by this 

 means, and by this means only, we can apply our 

 knowledge of the known animal to the unknown one, 

 and thus acquire the knowledge of it at once by 

 analogy. If this be not the use of systematic arrange- 

 ment, it does not appear likely that we shall discover 

 any other. 



It is probable that from respect to the existing 

 authorities, who had of course been his schoolmasters 

 in the demerits, as well as from that dislike of osten- 

 tation which is inseparable from genuine talent, 

 Cuvier made fewer changes in the nomenclature than 

 he himself could have wished, or at least saw to be 

 necessary. Upon a careful examination of the cha- 

 racters of the mammalia, as given by himself, it will 

 be seen that some of the orders as he has left them, 

 and even the class itself, admit of subdivision. The 

 fundamental character of the class does not apply, at 

 least in the same manner, to the placental and the 

 marsupial mammalia. Then again, if there is to be 

 any uniformity in the system, the marsupial ones 

 cannot by any means be brought within one order, 

 according to the general and the best foundation upon 

 which orders can be grounded the systems of their 

 arriving at their food and feeding ; because these 

 animals inhabit different sorts of places, live upon 

 different sorts of food, and collect that food in different 

 ways and by means of different instruments. Even 

 among those mammalia which are all regularly pla- 

 cental, there are some orders which would require 

 subdivision, because a character properly expressive 

 of no one of them would apply to another one with 

 equal propriety. These distinctions will be better 

 understood, however, when we come to the enume- 

 ration of the orders in which they occur ; and we 

 shall now mention their names, and offer a few 

 remarks on them, in that succession in which Cuvier 

 has arranged them. 



There are in all nine orders : Bimana, or two-handed 

 animals, of which man is the only instance, and we 

 have no reason to believe that there ever was a dif- 

 ferent genus, or even a different species of this order, 

 which stands alone upon peculiar grounds, which we 

 have already explained at some length ; Qitadrumana, 

 or four-handed animals ; Carnassiers, or feeders wholly 

 or chiefly upon animal substances ; Marsuputlia, or 

 animals in which the females are furnished with an 

 abdominal pouch, more or less developed according 

 to circumstances ; Rodcntia, or animals which have 

 the mouth formed for gnawing, and of which the 

 greater part live wholly or chiefly upon vegetable 

 matter ; Edentata, or animals in which the teeth are 

 defective or wanting ; Pachydermata, or thick-skinnec 

 animals ; Ruminantia, or animals which chew the cud 

 and Cetacea, or the whale race. 



BIMANA. So much has been said in former sec- 

 tions respecting the general character, structure, anc 

 functions of man, that it would be quite superfluous 

 to make any addition. As we have already observec 

 there is only one species of mankind, though there 

 are various races, differing from each other in the 

 external appearance, and also in the forms of some o 

 the bones, but all capable of breeding with each 

 other, and having offspring which is just as fertile in 

 the cross as in either of the races, and no greater 

 tendency to breed back to the pure blood than to 



)reed with exactly the same cross, or even info a 

 new race. This is perhaps the most decided evidence 

 we can have of sameness of species ; and so when 

 we find that it holds universally, any attempt at sub- 

 division would be unphilosophical. We have also 

 aid, that there is no evidence whatever of any extinct 

 pecies of bimana, or of any having existed in those 

 remote times when the general vegetation of the 

 earth was different from what it is now ; and this 

 eads us to connect the human race with the existing 

 state of things only. 



This is by no means an unimportant fact in the 

 listory of the world, or in reconciling the results of 

 eological discovery with the history of the human 

 race as it is recorded in the Bible anterior to the 

 commencement of other histories, which, however, 

 when they apply to the same subjects, always 

 strengthen the evidence of its truth. In the sacred ' 

 volume it is stated, that the earth was prepared for 

 the reception of man, by being covered with vege- 

 tables and stocked with animals before he was created, 

 and that the creation consisted of a single pair only. 

 This perfectly agrees with the physiological fact of 

 any perfect pair of the human race being still capable 

 of, in time, peopling a country. 



There is, in the shadowy and brief account of cre- 

 ation in the book of Genesis, something which agrees 

 better with the supposition that new lands are ( suc- 

 cessively elevated from the sea as old ones are worn 

 out, than we should have been prepared to expect, or 

 than would have been believed before the monumental 

 treasures of the earth were so well explored, or the 

 strength of those powers which are contained in the 

 earth were so fully investigated and tried. The earth 

 (meaning thereby the dry land, in contradistinction 

 to the water) " without form and void, and darkness 

 covering the face of the waters," is exactly the state of 

 things that would be produced, if the terrible exertion 

 of the internal forces were upheaving a continent 

 from the depths of the Atlantic or the Pacific. The 

 action of a single volcano, and that not to any very 

 great extent, has been known to render the atmosphere 

 and the earth under it well nigh as black as midnight 

 for a considerable period of time. The space of 

 action in these cases is generally small as compared 

 with a single mountain, and a mere nothing when 

 contrasted with a continent ; and if we suppose that 

 the laws of nature are not broken even in the 

 most violent natural action, which is the only suppo- 

 sition that reason can make, we must be prepared to 

 admit that the darkness arising from the ascent of a 

 continent might be deep and durable beyond any 

 example that we can have in the action of ordinary 

 volcanoes. In those actions of submarine volcanos 

 which raise islands above the surface of the water we 

 have displays which are sublime beyond those of the 

 land volcanoes, because of the great additional action 

 produced by the decomposition of water and the 

 combustion of its hydrogen. The quantity of aqueous 

 vapour produced upon such an occasion as that to 

 which we are alluding, would fill a vast extent of the 

 air with vapour of water. This vapour of water 

 would, upon the well-known fact that when salt water 

 is evaporated the salt does not rise along with the 

 vapour, furnish an abundant supply of fresh water for 

 filling all the hollows of the new made land, as soon 

 as that land was so cool that the vapour could 

 descend in rain ; and thus we have an ample provision 

 for lakes and rivers, in the very fact of the new land 



