396 CLASS MAMMALIA. 



same ; but the difference is, that the instinctive action was 

 from the beginning, what the other, from repeated practice, 

 becomes in the end. 



A single additional example will suffice to render this 

 theory completely clear and intelligible. When a man, 

 after having perfectly understood, and fixed in his memory 

 the principle of riding, mounts a horse for the first time, 

 none of his motions or attitudes, notwithstanding all his 

 science, are what they ought to be. His body swings for- 

 ward or backward, to the right or left, instead of remain- 

 ing in a vertical position. His legs are moving about, in- 

 stead of being fixed ; the motions of his hands and feet do 

 not accord, and in a word, there is no sort of harmony be- 

 tween him and his horse. At first it is only by a very great 

 mental effort that he is enabled to make any one of the 

 motions requisite in a given case, then another in accord 

 with the first, and finally, all that are prescribed by the art. 

 By degrees the same effort of mind becomes less and less 

 necessary ; the motions which were the most slow and 

 difficult, are now performed with facility and promptitude, 

 the moment the mind judges them to be necessary. At last, 

 after a practice of a certain duration, intelligence takes 

 no further share in this exercise. Everything that is re- 

 quisite is performed, as it were, of itself. If the horse makes 

 a contrary motion, this instantly produces a corresponding 

 motion on the part of the rider, and that with the quickness 

 with which the eyelid closes to protect the eye, or the head 

 turns to avoid a blow. From this time, all the intellectual 

 principles with which the exercise commenced, are trans- 

 formed into simple associations of motion, in fact, into the 

 merest mechanism. 



We have seen in the text that the family or group of or- 

 dinary Pachydermata with cloven feet are assimilated to 

 theRuminantia, particularly in their ostelogical characters. 



