CHAPTER XXXIV. 



Mammalia {Quadrupeds). 



By universal consent, those animals which we generally 

 call Quadrupeds are placed in the highest rank of organic 

 life. Perhaps it would be scarcely true to say that a 

 Guinea-pig or an Ant-eater is superior in energy and de- 

 velopment to a Falcon, superior in those characters which 

 determine relative rank in being ; but this only shews — 

 what we have had repeated occasion to state — that the 

 range of animal existences cannot be included in a linear 

 series. The Ant-eater and the Guinea-pig are members 

 of a great group of creatures, which are manifestly asso- 

 ciated together by a closer bond than that which allies 

 them, or any one of them, to other creatures; and this 

 great group possesses, as a whole and characteristically, 

 though in degrees differing inter se, the various senses, 

 powers, and faculties, both bodily and mental, that belong 

 to an animal in a higher state of development, than any 

 other equivalent group. 



The term u Quadruped" is applicable to this Class, not 

 in scientific strictness, but only in popular freedom of 

 speech. One whole Order — that of the Whales and Dol- 

 phins — is entirely destitute of the hinder pair of limbs, 

 and the external form of their body is fish-like, as are also 



