628 ZOOLOGY. 



intellectual behests of the creature. On the other hand, in 

 all general points, man's limbs are those of the primitive 

 type so common in the Eocene Period. As Cope remarks : 

 ■"He is plantigrade, has five toes, separate carpals and tar- 

 sals ; a short heel, rather flat astragalus, and neither hoofs 

 nor claws, but something between the two. The bones of 

 the fore arm and leg are not so unequal as in the higher 

 types ; and remain entirely distinct from each other, and the 

 ankle joint is not so perfect as in many of them. In his 

 teeth his character is thoroughly primitive. He possesses, in 

 fact, the original quadrituberculate molar with but little 

 modification. His structural superiority consists solely in 

 the complexity and size of his brain." 



Whether man in common with other animals is the result 

 of divinely ordered processes or biological laws, appearing at 

 the head of a long series of forms, and, as probably many 

 other animals have, with comparative suddenness, being at 

 the outset in all essential respects man, though a savage, and 

 not with a long pedigree of morphologically impossible Dar- 

 winian "missing links," — whether he thus originated, or by 

 an independent creative act, the result is a being concerning 

 whom the fact that he is physically an animal, is after all the 

 least important characteristic of the nature of him who is 

 the historian of his own and other species ; who is capable 

 of studying and in a degree comprehending the universe in 

 which he lives, and who whatever his physical origin may 

 have been, has intellectual, moral, and spiritual capabilities 

 which render his nature susceptible of endless improvement, 

 endowing him with immortality and all that it involves. 



Class VIII. — Mammalia. 



Body cmered with hair; young iwurished with milk secreted in mam- 

 mw; lower jaw articulating directly with the skull, the qvadrote bone be- 

 coming one of the ear-bones (mnlleua) ; a diaphragm dividing the body- 

 cavity into thoracic and abdominal portions ; heart with the aorta reflect- 

 ed over the left broni-hus ; blood-corpuscles non-nucleated ; brain large, 

 especially the cerebral hemispheres ; viviparous; uterine gestation. 

 Subclass I. Omithodelphia. — Order Monotremata. — Urinary and gen- 

 ital outlets opening into the cloaca. Laying large eggs 

 (Echidna, Omithorhynchus). 



