RUMINANT QUADRUPEDS. 87 
CHAPTER IX. 
RUMINANT QUADRUPEDS. 
150. Or the Ruminantia, or cud-chewing quadrupeds, 
there are eight families: 1. Bovide, oxen, buffaloes, ete. 
2. Ovidee, sheep. 3. Capride, goats. 4. Cervide, the 
deer tribe. 5. Moschidee, the musk-deer tribe. 6. An- 
telopidee, antelopes. 7. Camelide, camels. 8. Came- 
lopardee, giraffes, or camelopards. 
151. No animals are so useful to man as those of this 
order. Almost all the animal flesh which he consumes 
comes from the Ruminants. Some of them are his beasts 
of burden, and some supply him with various articles of 
necessity and convenience, such as milk, tallow, hides, 
horns, etc. Being thus necessary to man, they are dis- 
tributed over nearly all parts of the globe. Some of 
them, as the Reindeer of Lapland, and the Camel of 
Arabia and Northern Africa, are confined mostly to cer- 
tain regions; while others, as the Ox, the Sheep, and the 
Goat, go every where with man, except in regions which 
are so cold as not to afford them the requisite food in 
pasturage. 
152. The Ruminants make a very well defined order, 
all the families agreeing in their prominent common 
characteristics, and none of them being to any extent 
aberrant. Of all the herbivorous animals these are the 
most entirely confined to vegetable food. Of the Ro- 
dents, though mostly herbivorous, there are many that 
eat some animal food; most of the Edentata live on in- 
sects, and some devour flesh; and several species even 
of the Pachydermata have in part an animal diet. But 
there is not one of the Ruminants that is not exclusively 
herbivorous. Some, as the Camel and the Giraffe, are 
formed for browsing on the leaves and young shoots of. 
