1847.] On Various Genera of the Ruminants. 687 



together in a cheap form, and stript of their buckram, and numberless 

 men of sense and education will be found ready to apply them to their 

 only true use in the examination of such wild animals as chance may 

 throw into their way, though such men may be slow, as heretofore, 

 to toil blindly for the convenience of others who ought to, but do not, 

 seek to give interest and effect to their independant researches. Such a 

 guide to ordinary observation is the one thing needful in order to 

 interest men of sense in the matter. Let the means and ends, the 

 structure and the habit, the organ and its use, be thus juxtaposed, and 

 intelligent curiosity will soon be generally turned towards this wonder- 

 ful system of adaptations, emanating from omniscience. Nor does it 

 materially signify that all the indications of a genus or group of ani- 

 mals be accurate. Only let all of them be set down, some in the shape 

 of queries, and observation under favourable circumstances, that is of 

 the fresh and perfect animal, not of its mere skin, will soon determine 

 the fitness or reality of all such negative or positive marks of a group 

 of animals as are supposed to belong to it. Structures and manners 

 are the two heads under which the directions I advert to should fall. 

 Let the ' what to observe' upon each of these two points be separately 

 set down and applied to the several distinct lots or assortments of ani- 

 mals proper to the country, and there will be forthwith a general and 

 unlooked for effort to fill up the Zoological desiderata ! I pretend not 

 in the present paper fully to exemplify my own precepts as above 

 given ; nor have I the appliances requisite to the performance of the 

 entire work suggested. That work must emanate from the public 

 Museum and Library, and ought long since to have emanated from 

 them, as their appropriate and best (infinitely best) fruit and repay- 

 ment of the general contribution. For, where the phcenomena to be 

 ascertained are those of rare and secluded animals, where the real 

 objects of study are vital organs and their uses, let me ask any man of 

 sense if there be any limit to the superiority of a system which should 

 qualify the only persons in situations to note such phcenomena over the 

 system which practically leaves such a work wholly to half a dozen men 

 shut up in cities, though they are obliged to perform it by means so 

 inadequate as skins, eked out now and then by bones ? This is a ques- 

 tion well worthy of the consideration of Zoological Societies. My 

 present purpose is to add my mite in the way of popularizing and 



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