66 THE ANIMAL KINGDOM. 



RODENTS. 



THE Rodents, or gnawing animals, form a very numerous 

 order so numerous, indeed, that half of all the Mammalia 

 known belong to them. They are all of a small size, the 

 largest being the Capybara, a native of South America, 

 which is about the size of a small pig. The chief pecu- 

 liarity of this group of animals is the construction of their 

 teeth, which differ from those of all other animals. You 

 must know that although some of them, such as the Rat, 

 can eat almost any sort of food, still most of them are 

 herbivorous, and live upon the harder sorts of vegetable 

 matter the bark, roots, and stems of trees and you know 

 how fond Squirrels are of nuts, and how they chip and 

 chip away at the shell until they get to the kernel ; and 

 how Bats and Mice work their way through the floors of 

 cupboards, much more cleverly than we like. Well, you 

 must understand that they arc enabled to do this by four 

 large and strong front teeth' two in each jaw, which pro- 

 ject and meet like two pairs of chisels ; but I dare say you 

 have noticed that when a carpenter has been working in 

 hard wood he is obliged to take his chisel, firstly, to the 

 rough circular grind-stone to grind a new edge to it, and 

 then to the oil-stone, which he carries in his basket, so as 

 to get the edge fine and smooth. Now, although the 

 Beaver may have spent hours and hours in cutting off the 

 branch of a tree to use in building its dam, and although 

 the Squirrel may have worked industriously all day at 

 nut-cracking, and although little master mouse may have 

 devoted much time and labour to boring a hole in the 

 wainscoting of a cupboard, so as to get at the cheese or 

 "goodies" which may be there (for which exertions we 

 show our gratitude by detaining the clever little gentle- 

 man) still, the teeth of these four-legged carpenters never 

 require sharpening; and the reason is that whilst the 



