MAMMALIA. 



185 



is, that the dog can much more easily reduce vegeta- 

 ble matter to a state fit for the stomach, though, it' that 

 matter is very hard, even the dog has more trouble 

 in managing it. One of the hardest kinds of ordinary 

 vegetable food with which we are acquainted (if we 

 except the black raggy bread of the poor Hindoos, 

 which has to be steeped for some time in water before 

 they can eat it,) is a coarse ship biscuit. If a piece 

 of this is given to a hungry dog (and a hungry dog 

 will snap at any thing), it is not uninstructive to ob- 

 serve the mode in which he goes to work with it, so 

 as to obtain, by his superior means of resource, a com- 

 pensation for the want of lateral or grinding motion in 

 the jaws. If he gets the whole buiscuit, he can rea- 

 dily break it by the snap of the canines, and also 

 reduce it to smaller pieces, by means of the great car- 

 nivorous teeth ; but when it gets farther backward in 

 the jaws his labour is more difficult ; and as he opens 

 his mouth for every attack upon it, he twists the plane 

 of the mouth a little either to the one side or the 

 other, so that the action of the teeth may come 'upon 

 a new portion. In doing this, he usually keeps the 

 fore part of the jaws higher than the back part, in or- 

 der that the biscuit may not slide into that part of 

 his mouth which could not act in grinding it, and 

 which, from being farther from the centre of motion, 

 is less powerful in crushing, though more so in biting 

 with a snap, in consequence of the greater velocity 

 which the larger lever gives to it. 



If a piece of the same kind of food is given to a 

 hungry cat (and hungry cats will also attempt to eat 

 many substances), the chewing part of the process is 

 far more difficult ; and even a common crust of 

 bread is eaten with much apparent labour and not a 

 little grimace. 



The different lengths of the jaws, and consequently 

 of the head from the eyes forward in the different 

 genera of carnivorous animals, are well worthy of 

 notice. If the jaws are short, the dead bite, as we may 

 call it, or that which keeps its hold and tears, is, of 

 course, most powerful, because of the shortness of the 

 lever ; but when the jaws are long, the snapping bite 

 is by far the most effective, in consequence of the 

 greater velocity afforded by the long lever. In pro- 

 portion, therefore, as the jaws are shortened, we get 

 dead strength for continued action ; and in proportion 

 as they are lengthened, we get quick motion for mo- 

 mentary action. The first of these have more the 

 character of a feeding mouth, and the last blends with 

 this the character of a killing one. Upon the princi- 

 ple to which we have so often alluded, of a divided 

 function in any organ being weaker in each of the 

 parts, than a single function in an organ of equal 

 power upon the whole, it follows that the mouth of 

 the short-jawed carnivora is more completely adapted 

 for eating flesh than that of the long-jawed ones ; 

 but that, notwithstanding the large canines with which 

 the more powerful ones are furnished, it is not so well 

 adapted for killing prey that is to say, it cannot kill 

 prey so quickly. We find in the different genera, 

 that the character of the teeth always agrees with this 

 character of the jaw?. If the jaws are short, the tu- 

 berculous teeth are fewer in number, and their tuber- 

 cles less developed ; and where the jaws are long, the 

 number of these teeth is greater, and the tubercles 

 more perfect. Even in those varieties of the same 

 species, which must be supposed to have arisen from 

 accidental causes that is, from causes external of the 

 animals themselves there is an approximation to the 



same character. The long-nosed dogs, snap and very 

 generally seize upon a part where the single bite is 

 effective ; as, for instance, a greyhound dislocates the 

 spine of a hare, and a fox cuts the blood-vessel of a 

 sheep's neck ; while a bull-dog lays hold wherever he 

 can, and tears away. The smaller carnivora which 

 are long-nosed, and at the same time very sanguinary 

 such, lor instance, as the marten or weasel tribe ge- 

 nerally, if not invariably, seize upon the blood-vessels, 

 or the vertebra? of the neck of their prey, according 

 as the one or the other is more vulnerabfe ; and like 

 expert butchers, they kill and in general suck the 

 blood before they divide the carcases of their victims. 

 Whether professional butchers of the human race at 

 first took their lessons from these animals it is not 

 worth our while to inquire ; but it is not a little 

 curious that both should proceed in nearly the same 

 fashion. It is also worthy of attention, that poultry 

 killed by weasels keep longer fresh than those that 

 are killed by animals which have a short bite. 



The gradation in blood-thirstiness which we can 

 trace among these animals, as according with their 

 organic structure, is worthy of notice, as showing to 

 what exquisitely nice shades animals are formed for 

 their work. The dog and cat tribes are the most 

 familiar, and also the best illustrations of this. The 

 cats are decidedly the more carnivorous of the two ; 

 and therefore they have the mouth more exclusively 

 a feeding apparatus. To compensate for that part of 

 the mouth in which they fall short of the dog, the 

 clutching claws are given them ; and the two jointly 

 are more than a match for the dog's mouth in animal 

 murder. But the dog also has his compensation for 

 this deficiency in the mere work of death : the whole 

 energy of his feet is reserved for locomotion ; and 

 thus he can chase his prey ; and taking him altoge- 

 ther, he is certainly not inferior in proportion to his 

 strength ; and indeed, when we take his superior sa- 

 gacity into consideration, we are constrained to admit 

 that he is the nobler animal of the two meaning 

 thereby that the effect which he can produce is 

 greater in proportion to the quantity of matter con- 

 tained in his body. 



We have gone somewhat at large into those gene- 

 ral characters of the carnivora for a very obvious 

 reason namely, the place which they hold in wild 

 nature. When we view nature in this way, we must 

 put man, whether savage or civilised, and his accom- 

 modations, altogether out of the question. This is 

 the proper way of viewing the subject ; for man is 

 really, as we may say, supplemental to the animal 

 kingdom, in character as well as in the epoch of his 

 creation. The possession of the intellectual spirit 

 takes him completely out of the class with the rest ; 

 if we neglect to do this, our view of the irrational 

 mammalia cannot fail in being a very distorted one. 

 In this view the carnivora have the highest function 

 to perform, they are the regulators of the other 

 mammalia, which again are the regulators of the in- 

 vertebrated tribes, and jointly with these of the vege- 

 table kingdom. The common application of " King 

 of the beasts," which has often been given to the lion, 

 is not, therefore, a mere fancy, and an unfounded 

 fancy, as some have pretended to assert, who, whether 

 they were aware of it or not, obviously, but more 

 erroneously, have taken man for their type of animal 

 perfection. If we suppose man banished from the 

 world, and the present race of animals left, the lion 

 would be " every inch a king." It must not be sup- 



