CHAP. V. DEFENCES OF QUADRUPEDS. 129 



the combat. All animals furnished with teeth, use 

 them, instinctively, to bite their opponents, although 

 their primary use is obviously to masticate their food ; 

 hut it is only in the carnivorous tribe, where to these 

 weapons we find added retractile claws, which, when 

 not used, are drawn into the skin (like a pair of 

 scissors contained in a sheath), and are thus preserved 

 in all their sharpness. Among the Quadrumana, or 

 monkey tribe, we find, as in man, no natural weapons 

 of defence ; but they are endowed with a cunning, a 

 quickness, and an agility, rarely equalled, and never 

 surpassed, by any other quadrupeds. Besides great 

 muscular strength, which enables them to take pro- 

 digious leaps, they have the faculty of climbing in an 

 extraordinary degree. By exerting both these, they 

 escape from the carnivorous quadrupeds which infest 

 their native regions ; and, leaping from bough to bough, 

 will pass through the most entangled forests with 

 greater swiftness than an ordinary horse would travel 

 on a turnpike road. The apes upon the rock of 

 Gibraltar, although close to the town, can never be ap- 

 proached by the most cautious sportsmen; they climb, 

 with the greatest facility, among frightful precipices, 

 where neither dogs nor men can follow ; and thus their 

 preservation is effected by the possession of one single 

 faculty. These habits of climbing belong to nearly all 

 the lemurs : while such as are very slow secure them- 

 selves by day in holes, and only venture forth by night. 

 Bats, in like manner, are nocturnal ; but their want of 

 defensive weapons is compensated by ample wings : 

 with these they are secure from all terrestrial foes ; 

 and they venture forth, with their companions the 

 goatsuckers, at an hour when all the denizens of air, 

 including the diurnal rapacious birds, have long retired 

 to rest. Thus we find that safety is provided for the 

 weakest animals as effectually as for the strong, although 

 by modes the very reverse of each other. 



(154.) In the order of ungulated or hoofed quad, 

 rupeds (Ungulata), we find the means of self-pre- 



K 



