1060 Influence of circumstances on the Actions of Animals. 
ment, and are serving no other purpose than to sustain them as well 
as the rest of the foot, the greater part of them are shortened, are 
obliterated, and so finally disappear. Thus, in the pachyderms; 
some have five toes on the feet enveloped in horn, and in conse- 
quence their hoof is divided into five parts; others have only four, 
and others still only three. But in the ruminants, the most ancient 
of mammals, which are confined to sustaining themselves on the 
ground, there are only two toes to the feet. It is also found that 
there is but one toe in solipedes (the horse, the ass). Now, among 
these herbivorous animals, and particularly amoug the ruminants, 
it is found that, from the circumstances of the wild country which 
they inhabit, they are constantly exposed to become the prey of 
carnivorous animals, and to be able to find safety only in precipitate 
flight. Necessity has then forced them to exercise themselves in 
rapid running; and from the habit which they have acquired, their 
bodies have become more slight, and their limbs slenderer : one sees 
examples in the antelope, gazelles, etc. The deer, roe-buck; 
fallow-deer, etc., are exposed to perish by the chase, or pursuit 
by man. This risk has reduced them to the same necessity, has 
constrained them to the same habits, and has produced the same 
results in them. The ruminant animals, being able to use 
their feet only to sustain themselves, and having little strength 
in their jaws, which are used only in cropping and browsing the 
herbs, they are able to strike blows only with the head, directing 
one against the other with the top of that region. In their fits of 
rage, which are frequent, especially among the males, their “ senti- 
ment interieur,” by these efforts directs more strongly the fluids 
toward that part of the head, and causes there a secretion of 
horny material in some, and of both osseous and horny material w 
others, which gives to them solid protuberances. This is the origin 
of horns and bosses, with which the greater number of these ani- 
mals have the head armed. It is curious to observe the product of 
the habits in the peculiar form and the height of the giraffe (Camelo- 
pardalis). It is known that this animal, the tallest of mammals, 
inhabits the interior of Africa, and that it lives in places where the 
earth is almost always arid and without herbage, so that it is obliged 
_ to browse the leaves of the trees, and to force itself continually to 
reach them. It results from this long-continued habit, in all indi- 
