350 CARNIVORES. 
There has been a considerable amount of—more or less unprofitable—discussion 
as to whether the Carnivores, or Apes and Monkeys, are entitled to occupy the 
highest place among Mammals. Putting man on one side, there can, however, be 
but little doubt that, for their particular mode of life, the higher Carnivores, both 
as regards their bodily structure and their brain power are fully as highly 
organised as the Apes; and to say that the one group is higher or lower than the 
other is thus practically an impossibility. A more just view is to compare the 
Carnivores and the Primates with two trees of different kinds, each of which has 
attained practically the same height; and bears fruit and flowers of an equally 
perfect development. 
Had we to deal only with the existing forms of the animal kingdom, and if 
the seals and walruses were excluded (as is done by some zoologists) from the 
Carnivores, there would be no great difficulty in giving a short and concise defini- 
tion which would at once distinguish the order from all the others. The seals and 
walruses differ, however, so markedly in the characters of their teeth, as well as in 
many other structural points, from the more typical Carnivores, while a number 
of extinct forms appear to connect the latter on the one hand with the Insectivores, 
and on the other with the Marsupials, that any such concise definition is impossible. 
Among the characteristics common to all Carnivores, whether terrestrial or 
aquatic, the following are some of the most important. In all cases the toes are 
provided with claws, which are very generally sharp and curved, with no resem- 
blance to nails. Then, again, the number of complete toes is never less than four 
to each foot, and is frequently five. And in no ease is the first toe capable of being 
opposed to the other digits; so that a Carnivore can in no sense be said to have a 
hand in the popular acceptation of that term. 
The teeth, in conformity with the flesh-eating habits of the great majority of 
the members of the order, are generally large and well developed; and are always 
divisible into incisors, tusks or canines, and cheek-teeth. As a general rule, the 
incisor teeth are three in number on each side of both the upper and lower jaws, 
and in no case do they exceed this number ;! while the third or outermost of these 
three incisors is always larger than either of the others, more especially in the 
upper jaw. The tusks are large, and adapted for seizing and retaining the prey of 
these animals. The different families of the order show a considerable diversity 
in the form and structure of the cheek-teeth; but, as a general rule, the more 
anterior of these teeth have sharp and more or less compressed crowns, while very 
frequently, as will be explained later on, one pair of teeth in each jaw is specially 
modified to bite with a scissor-like action against an opposing pair in the opposite 
jaw. Moreover, in such Carnivores as have the crowns of the molar teeth 
flattened and expanded, these crowns are not divided into distinct portions by 
infoldings of the enamel, as we shall find to be so frequently the case with those 
of the Rodents. 
The most distinctive feature of the skull of the Carnivores is to be found in 
the mode of articulation of the lower jaw; the condyle, or projecting process by 
which the latter hinges on to the skull proper, taking the form of a half-cylinder, 
elongated in the transverse direction. This half-cylinder is received into a similarly 
1 The Marsupial Carnivores never have less than four pairs of incisor teeth in the upper jaw. 
