512 Cuvieyian^ w Natural^ System of Zoology : — 



mal discovered in New Holland, which possesses most of the 

 characters of mammiferous animals, but naturalists are not 

 yet decided whether it be oviparous or viviparous. This ani- 

 mal is called by Blumenbach the Ornithorhyncus paradoxicus. 

 Should it prove to be oviparous, it ought, says Cuvier, in 

 some respects to be considered as forming a particular class. 

 In the preceding description of the distinctive characters 

 of mammiferous animals, it has not been deemed expedient 

 to go so fully into the anatomical details as Cuvier has done ; 

 what is here given will suffice to enable the student to dis- 

 tinguish the animals in the different orders of this class from 

 those of the three other classes of vertebrated animals. 



Division of the Class of Mammiferous Animals into Orders. 



The characters which establish the essential distinctions 

 between the animals of this class, are taken from the organ of 

 feeling, and the organs of mastication. On the former depend 

 their different degrees of ability or adroitness ; the latter organs 

 determine the nature of their food, and are not only essentially 

 connected with their digestive functions, bat with numerous 

 consequences relating even to their intelligence. 



The perfection of the organs of feeling is estimated by 

 their number and mobility, and by the manner in which they 

 are more or less deeply covered at their extremities with nails 

 or hoofs. 



A hoof which entirely covers the part of the toe that 

 touches the ground, blunts the sense of feeling, and renders 

 the foot incapable of seizing or grasping. The opposite ex- 

 treme to this is where the nail forms a single lamina, only 

 covers one side of the finger or toe, and leaves the other un- 

 covered, possessing all the delicacy of feeUng of which it is 

 capable. 



The regimen or nature of the food is determined by the 

 form of the chewing or grinding teeth (mdchelieres), the arti- 

 culation of the jaws always depending on the form of these 

 teeth. Animals that devour flesh require chewing-teeth that 

 cut like a saw, and jaws restricted in their motion to opening 

 and shutting like scissors. 



In order to bruise seeds or roots, it is necessary that the 

 crown of the grinders should be flat, and that the jaws should 

 move horizontally ; it is further requisite, that the crown of 

 the teeth should be always uneven, like a millstone, and that 

 the substance of which it is formed should be composed of 

 parts differing in hardness, that one of them may wear faster 

 than the other. 



Animals with hoofs are all necessarily herbivorous, and 



