xl INTRODUCTION. 



birds, reptiles, and fishes,] are called vertebrated animals. They 

 have all red blood, a muscular heart, a mouth furnished with 

 two jaws situated either above or before each other, distinct 

 organs of sight, hearing, smell, and taste, placed in the cavities 

 of the face, never more than four limbs, the sexes always 

 separated, and a very similar distribution of the medullary 

 masses and the principal branches of the nervous system." 



The first class of vertebrated animals consists of mammals, 

 technically termed MAMMALIA, both names alluding to the 

 peculiar and unexceptionable characteristic of their possessing 

 teats (mammce), and of course suckling their young. The 

 MAMMALIA are divided by Cuvier into nine orders ; but 

 as the publication of a treatise on system is not the object 

 here proposed, it will be necessary to refer the reader to 

 Cuvier' s Regne Animal itself, or to some of the several trans- 

 lations of it, for the details. His observations, however, on 

 the division of this class into orders must not be omitted : 



crocodiles, tortoises, frogs, and other four-footed creatures with the first class 

 of animals, from which they are far removed by nature, it is desirable that 

 those terms should be abandoned for the more discriminating and more 

 euphonious term mammal, which is therefore adopted throughout this volume, 

 with the exception of the title-page. It may here be mentioned, that I use 

 the word vegetal instead of vegetable, because the latter term, from its being 

 more particularly applied to cabbages, potatoes, turnips, &c., frequently 

 conveys a restricted notion, when a writer intends it to comprise all that 

 vegetates, from the most stupendous and graceful cabbage-palm to the lowly 

 and clumsy-looking cabbage ; from this to the little delicate violet, and from 

 this " infant of the spring" to the most diminutive moss. Vegetable is as ugly 

 and unpoetic a term as constable; but vegetal, used by Burton in his Anatomy 

 of Melancholy, and by other old writers, is a good word deserving of being 

 restored to our language, and agrees well with the terms which describe the 

 other grand divisions of nature thus, the animal, vegetal, and mineral 

 kingdoms. 



