MAMMALIA. 355 



ferocious appearance. The general color of the hide is 

 tawny ; the feet and paws are immense, the animal being 

 adapted for leaping and overpowering the largest game. 

 The females are somewhat smaller than the males, and 

 have no manes. About twenty extinct species of this 

 family have been found, resembling lions, tigers, etc. 

 The remains of a ferocious tiger (Mackarodus\ have 

 been discovered in England and other countries. It 

 lived contemporaneously with man, and had serrated 

 teeth, and fangs eight inches long, more like sabers than 

 teeth. 



VALUE. Five hundred lion-skins are used annually by the trade ; 

 one hundred thousand wild-cat, and over one million skins of the com- 

 mon cat are made into cheap furs. 



Order IX. Primates. General Characteristics. We 

 now come to the last and highest order of mammals, 

 represented by the lemurs, monkeys, and man. In the 

 higher forms of apes and monkeys a vast improvement 

 or advance is noticed. The body is now carried more 

 erect, claws are replaced by finger-nails, the fingers are 

 long and more perfectly adapted to a greater number of 

 uses than in the preceding forms, and the great toe of 

 the hind-feet is much enlarged and opposable to the oth- 

 ers ; the legs are exserted quite free from the trunk, the 

 brain is large, the ears rounded, having a distinct lobe ; 

 the body is hairy, the tail long or short, and the face in 

 many extremely human in its detail. The primates are 

 divided into two sub-orders : i. Prosimia, comprising the 

 lemurs ; and 2. Anthropoidea, including all the rest that are 

 divided provisionally into five divisions or families as fol- 

 lows : i. The marmosets (Hapqltdce). 2. The American 

 monkeys, having three true molar teeth on each side of 

 each jaw (Cebidcz}. 3. The Old World monkeys, except 

 the man-like apes (Cercopithecidce). 4. The man-like apes 

 (Stmiidce) ; and, 5. Man (Hominid<z). 

 25 



