86 ARRANGEMENT OF ANIMALS. 



easily tamed, and rendered lamiliar to man, altliougli their 

 size and strength make them too dangerous for playfellows ; 

 and many admit of training, so that they can be employed 

 in hunting. 



The genera are again formed into groups, called orders : 

 thus the cow, sheep, goat, deer, antelope, camel, lama, and 

 other genera, compose the order ruminantia. All these 

 feed on vegetables, and submit their food to a double pro- 

 cess of mastication, in reference to which the stomach 

 possesses a very peculiar and complicated structure. This 

 vegetable diet, and this process of rumination, are con- 

 nected with certain structures of teeth and jaws, with par- 

 ticular arrangements of the organs of sensation and motion, 

 and with certam general liabits, whicli produce great simi- 

 larity of character throughout the whole order. 



The different orders are again arranged into certain 

 CLASSES. Thus all the animals which are vivaporous, and 

 in which the young are nourished for a certain time by a 

 secretion of the mother, are united into the { lass mam- 

 malia, or mammiferous animals ; so called from their 

 mammse, or glandular organs, which secrete the fluid nu- 

 triment of the young. 



Lastly, the classes are assembled, on the same principle 

 of resemblance, into provinces or departments of tlie 

 animal kingdom. The mammalia, birds, fishes, and reptiles, 

 constitute the department vcrtebralia, or vertebral ani- 

 ii;ials — all of them possessing a vertebral column or spine, 

 the most important piece of an internal articulated skeleton. 



A scheme of the animal kingdom, drawn out on these 

 principles, is called a natural method or distribution ; 

 because the natural relations or resemblances of the objects 

 comprised in it are the babis of its formation. To complete 

 it an accurate knowledge of the whole animated creation is 

 necessary 5 so that it cannot be attempted with any reason- 

 able chance of success, except in an advanced state of the 

 science. 



When such an arrangement has been properly executed; 

 that is, when the animals have been assigned to each divi- 



