190 



ON ZOOLOGICAL SYSTEMS, AND THE 



generally, and with perfect ease, at the rate of a mile every two minutes, or 

 upwards of seven hundred miles every twenty-four hours, till it reaches the 

 precincts of its summer or winter residence. 



We ascend to the first and moHEST class — to that rank of animals which 

 is most complicate in form and most competent in power. This class is 

 chiefly distinguished by the possession of lungs, and an organ for suckling- ; 

 and most of its kinds possess four supporters in the shape of hands or feet, 

 or both. To this last character the class was formerly indebted for its classic 

 name, which was quadrupeds, or four-footed. As some of the kinds under 

 it, however, in its modern arrangement, are possessed of no supporters of any 

 sort, either hands or feet ; others have four hands and no feet ; and others, 

 again, have two of each, the absurdity of retaining such a name must be ob- 

 vious to every one ; and hence it has been correctly and elegantly exchanged, 

 by Linnaeus, for that of mammalia, from the mammary or suckling organ 

 which belongs to every kind of the class, as it stands at present, and to no 

 kind whatever out of it ; and which-, as we have no fair synonym for it in our 

 own tongue, I shall beg leave now, as I have on various other occasions, to 

 render mammals. 



The class is distributed into seven orders ; the characters of which are 

 taken from the number, situation, and structure of the teeth. The seven 

 orders are as follows : — primates, bruta, feree, glires, pecora, beliuae, cete. It 

 is difficult to find English synonyms for these Latin terms, which, in several 

 instances, are used in a kind of arbitrary sense, not strictly pointed out by the 

 terms themselves. The following are the best that occur to me : chieftains ; 

 brute-beasts ; savage beasts ; burrovving-beasts ; cattle ; warriors ; and whales. 



The first order, primates or chieftains, is distinguished by the possession 

 of four cutting teeth in each jaw. This mark would also include the race of 

 man ; and Linnaeus has actually included him in the order before us, as he is 

 included in the class by Cuvier and most of the naturalists. From such 

 arrangements, however, I shall take leave to differ. Man ought to stand by 

 himself ; he has characters peculiar to himself, and which place him at an 

 infinite distance from all other animals. With this exclusion, the entire class 

 is reduced to three kinds, the simia or monkey ; the lemur or maucauco ; and 

 the vespertilio or bat : kinds which can only be collectively entitled to the 

 appellation of primates or chiefs, from their very slight resemblance to man 

 in the general distribution of the teeth : for though a few of the monkey tribes 

 have an approximation in their exterior and erect form, in the greater number 

 this character is very inappreciate, while it is nearly lost in the lemur, and 

 altogether so in the bat. 



Among the simia kind, the most singular species is certainly the ourang- 

 outang, especially the grave, gentle, and very docile Pongo. I have only 

 time to observe farther upon this kind, that those without tails are denomi- 

 nated apes ; those with short tails, baboons ; and those with long tails proper 

 monkeys. Among the lemurs, the most curious, perhaps, is the 1. volans, 

 or flying maucauco, the galiopithecus volans, or flying colugo of Pallas and 

 Shaw ; an action which he is able to accomplish from tree to tree by means 

 of a strong leathery membrane that surrounds the body and reaches from the 

 head to the fore-feet, hind-feet, and extremity of the tail; and which gives 

 him an approach to the bat. 



Of the vespertilio or bat-kind, which is well known to fly only by night, 

 and by means of an expansive membrane, instead of by wings, one of its 

 most extraordinary faculties is that of a knowledge of the presence, and appa- 

 rently of the approach, of objects, by some other sense or medium than that 

 of vision ; for when deprived of its eyes, this knowledge, and a consequent 

 power of avoiding objects, seems still to continue. The vespertilio Vam- 

 pyrus, or ternate bat, an inhabitant of India and Africa, is said to be fond of 

 blood, and occasionally to fasten on such persons as he finds asleep, and to 

 suck their veins till he becomes bloated. He might hence, under proper 

 management, be rendered an able and valuable substitute for the leech. In 

 poetry he has often been introduced, under the name of vampire, as a most 

 hideous and appalling monster. 



