354 ELEMENTARY ZOOLOGY. 



skin, stretched between the fingers and from leg to leg. 

 The bat is extremely sensitive to touch, and it is claimed 

 that they are able to guide their night flights by this 

 sense rather than by sight. They rest in caves and 

 other dark places during the day, where they support 

 themselves by means of the claws on the thumb of the 

 arm and on the toes of the hind limbs. They feed on 

 insects and fruits. One species is known to suck blood. 

 The front legs are better developed than the hind ones, 

 which is not common in mammals. They are somewhat 

 gregarious in habits. 



350. The Hoofed Mammals (Ungulata). This order 

 includes a number of large animals, chiefly herbivorous, 

 that walk on their toes. The horny growth so common 

 in the vertebrates at the end of the toes becomes broad- 

 ened and thickened into a hoof. There are three subdivi- 

 sions of this large group: (i) the even-toed types, in 

 which the toes have been reduced to four or two; (2) the 

 odd-toed types which have five, three, or one; and (3) 

 those with a proboscis, or much developed nose, for 

 grasping (as the elephant and the extinct mammoth 

 and mastodon) , 



The even-toed forms include the ruminants, which have 

 a complex stomach (Fig. 147), and after swallowing their 

 food in large pellets they send it back to the mouth later 

 to be chewed ("chewing the cud"). Here are included 

 some of the animals most important to man, as the ox, the 

 camel, the sheep, the goats, the deer, the giraffe, and all 

 their kind. The non-ruminating even- toed mammals 

 are the hippopotamus, the hog, the peccaries. In the 

 language of the Bible they have the "cloven hoof, but do 

 not chew the cud." 



