CHAPTER AI 
THE ORDER CARNIVORA 
THOUGH the existing Carnivora as at present restricted! form a 
very natural and well-defined order among the Mammalia, it is 
difficult to find any important common diagnostic characters by 
which they can be absolutely separated ; so that, as in the case of 
so many other natural groups, it is by the possession of a combina- 
tion of various characters that they must be distinguished. Thus 
they are all unguiculate, and never have less than four well-developed 
toes on each foot, with nails more or less pointed, rarely rudimentary 
or absent. The pollex and hallux are never opposable to the other 
digits. They are regularly diphyodont and heterodont, and their 
teeth are always rooted.2_ Their dentition consists of small pointed 
incisors, usually three in number, on either side of each jaw, of 
which the first is always the smallest and the third the largest, the 
difference being most marked in the upper jaw; strong conical, 
pointed, recurved canines; cheek-teeth variable, but generally, 
especially in the anterior part of the series, more or less compressed, 
pointed, and trenchant; if the crowns are flat and tuberculated 
they are never complex or divided into lobes by deep inflexions of 
enamel. The condyle of the lower jaw is a transversely placed 
half - cylinder working in a deep glenoid fossa of corresponding 
form. The brain varies much in/relative size and form, but the 
hemispheres are never destitute of well-marked convolutions (Fig. 
23,p. 71). The stomach (Fig. 234) is always simple and pyriform. 
The cecum is either absent or short and simple (Fig. 235), and 
the colon is not sacculated, or greatly wider than the small intestine. 
Vesicule seminales are never present. Cowper’s glands are present 
1 The Fere of Linneus included all the then known species of the modern 
orders Carnivora, Insectivora, and Marsupialia. 
* The tusks of the Walrus, altogether so aberrant in its dentition, are partial 
exceptions to this statement, but in old individuals the pulp-cavity fills up, and 
they cease to grow. 
fi 
