414 INTRODUCTION TO ZOOLOGY. 



himself for several days on their choicest leaves and branches, 

 which till then had been far beyond his reach."* 



The theory thus proposed is, as Professor Owen remarks, 

 " strictly in accordance with, as it has been suggested by, the 

 ascertained anatomy of the very remarkable extinct animals, 

 whose business in a former world it professes to explain;' 7 

 and he sums up his reasoning in the following words: "all the 

 characteristics which exist in the skeleton of the Mylodon and 

 Megatherium, conduce and conqur to the production of the 

 forces requisite for uprooting and prostrating trees, of which 

 characteristics, if any one were wanting the effect would not 

 be produced" 



ORDER RUMINANTIA. RUMINATING ANIMALS. 



" Mightiest of all the beasts of chase, 



That roam in woody Caledon, 

 Crashing the forest in his race, 



The mountain Bull comes thundering on. 



" Fierce on the hunter's quiver'd band, 

 He rolls his eyes of swarthy glow, 

 Spurns with black hoof and horn, the sand, 

 And tosses high his mane of snow." 



SCOTT'S CADYOW CASTLE. 



" THE order Ruminantia is distinguished from all the other 

 orders of mammalia, by the existence of four stomachs, 

 arranged for the act of ruminating or chewing the cud. These 

 animals are essentially herbivorous, and are all possessed of 

 the cloven hoof; and it is only among them that species are 

 met with whose foreheads are armed with horns. This order, 

 which is one of the most natural and best defined! of all the 



i * The substance of Professor Owen's Memoir on the Mylodon, has been 

 so ably abstracted by Sir R. I. Murchison, in his address as President of 

 the Geological Society, 1843, that we have, as far as possible, availed < 

 selves of the language employed by that eminent geologist. 



f This opinion, though expressed by Cuvier and generally received, 

 been called in question by Professor Owen, from evidence principa 

 afforded by his researches into the structure of extinct species of Ru 

 nantia and Pachydermata. 



