EDENTATA. 169 
similarly furnished with small transverse lamine. They have no 
teeth except at the bottom of the mouth, where there are two 
throughout, without roots, with flat crowns, and composed like 
those of the Orycteropus, of little vertical tubes. There is a mem- 
brane to the fore feet, which not only unites the toes, but extends 
far beyond the nails; in the hind feet the membrane terminates at 
the root of the nails; two characters, which, with the flattened 
tail, make them aquatic animals. Their tongue is in a manner 
double: one in the bill bristled with villosities ; and a second on the 
base of the first, which is thicker, and furnished anteriorly with two 
little fleshy points. The stomach is small, oblong, and has the py- 
lorus near the cardia. The cecum is small; and many salient and 
parallel laminz are visible in the intestines. The penis has only 
two tubercles. ‘The Ornithorhynchi inhabit the rivers and marshes 
of New Holland in the neighbourhood of Port Jackson. 
Two species only are known, one with smooth, thin, reddish 
fur, the Ornithorhynchus paradoxus, Blumenb., and the other 
with blackish-brown, flat and frizzled hair. Probably these are 
only varieties of age. Voy. de Peron, I, pl. xxxiv. 
ORDER VIL. 
PACHYDERMATA. 
The Edentata terminate the series of unguiculated animals, 
and we have just seen that there are some of them whose 
nails are so large, and so envelope the extremities of the toes, 
as to approximate them in a certain degree to the hoofed 
animals. ‘They still, however, possess the faculty of bending 
these toes round various objects, and of seizing with more or 
less force. The total deficiency of this faculty characterizes 
the hoofed animals. Using their feet merely as supporters, 
they are never furnished with clavicles; their fore-arm is 
always in a state of pronation, and they are reduced to the 
necessity of feeding on vegetables. Their forms and habits 
present much less variety than those of the Unguiculata, and 
they can hardly be divided into more than two orders, those 
which ruminate, and those which do not; but these latter, 
Vou. I.—W 
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