BEASTS OF PREY — Order, CARNIVORA 
THE story of the creodonts tells of the rise of the powerful 
modern order, Carnivora, — the beasts of prey, whose food is 
flesh of other animals which must be killed day by day. Hence 
they are equipped as hunters and fighters, and their armament 
is carried to a very high degree of perfection, so that almost 
every kind of living thing may be preyed upon by one or more 
sorts of carnivores, and each may defend his quarry and himself 
against rapacious rivals. All (except the bears) walk upon the 
under surface of the toes — are ‘‘phalangigrade.” 
There always has been and always will be in every department and rank 
of animal life a class which thus lives by preying upon its neighbors. From 
the beginning, certain kinds of animals have discovered, by accident or 
example, that some, at least, of their associates were eatable and within their 
power; and have thereafter depended upon them for food. Hence men 
long ago divided the animal kingdom into those living wholly on a vegeta- 
ble diet (herbivorous — herbivores), or wholly on flesh (carnivorous — 
carnivores). 
Now this is an economical arrangement by nature in two ways. In the 
first place, it permits a double use of a larger part of the available and always 
Bcaciaee limited food supply. The vegetable eaters gather and digest 
ing Food the raw materials, so to speak, which are so abundant and 
Supply. persistent that they afford subsistence for a very great number 
of animals in most parts of the globe; and every sort of growing thing, 
from microscopic diatoms in the water and the scanty lichens on arctic 
rocks to luscious fruits or solid timber, is utilized by some creature. In 
short, the vegetable world could support, generally speaking, no more ani- 
mals than are now feeding upon it, and there the population of the world 
would come to its limit but for a second circumstance: the eating of a 
meal of grass or the like does not put an end to its usefulness as food. This 
raw material, as I have termed it, is simply changed by the processes of 
digestion and assimilation into the substance of the eater’s flesh, which 
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