DISTINCTIVE CHARACTERS OF ANIMALS, 



203 



Nor should we suffer their other curious endowments to pass by us un- 

 noticed. The muscles, and delicate plumage of their wings, give them 

 not merely the power of flight, but under different modifications, a nearly 

 equal command over earth, air, and water : for such a provision enables 

 the rail, destitute as he is of a webbed foot, to rival, in swimming and 

 diving, the guillemot ; the ostrich, as we have just observed, to outstrip 

 in running the speed of the race-horse ; and even the diminutive swallow, 

 and various other migratory birds, to double, when on the wing, the pace 

 of the fleetest ostrich ; and to dart, twice a year, across the Atlantic and 

 Mediterranean, often at the rate of a mile in a minute for seve?al minutes 

 in succession ; and perhaps 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 re- 

 sidence. 



We ascend to the first and highest 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 in- 

 debted for its classic name, which was quadrupeds, or four-footed. As 

 some of the kinds under it, however, in its modern arrangement, are poS' 

 sessed 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 obvious to every one ; and hence it has 

 been correctly and elegantly exchanged by Linneus, 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, ferae, glires, pecora, belluse, cete. 

 It is difliicult 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 ; burrowing-beasts ; cattle ; war- 

 riors ; and whales. 



The first order, primates or chieftains, is distinguished by the pos- 

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

 the race of man ; and Linneus 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 col- 

 lectively 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- 

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



