DISTINCTIVE CHARACTERS OF ANIMALS. 



207 



iV. Rodeiitia : gnawers. Want the canine teeth only. Cavies, bea- 

 vers, squirrels, rats of all kinds. 



V. Edentata : edentulate. Want both the incisive and canine teeth. 

 Ant-eaters, pangolins, and armadillos. 



VI. Tardigrada : slow-footed. Want only the incisive teeth. Sloth 

 tribes. 



The three families belonging to the second, or hoof-footed order, are 

 the following. 



VII. Pachydermata : thick-skinned. More than two toes ; more than 

 two hoofs. Elephants; tapirs. Hogs, hippopotamus, rhinoceros, and 

 hyrax or damon. 



VIII. Rurainantia : ruminants. Two toes ; two hoofs. Camels, 

 musks, deer, giraffes, goats, sheep, oxen. 



^ IX. Solipeda: single-hoofed. One toe, one hoof. Horse alone, in- 

 cluding the ass-tribe. 



The two famihes belonging to the third, or fin-footed order, are the 

 following. / 



X. Amphibia : amphibials. Four feet. Seals, and morses. This 

 family name should be changed, since the same term is also employed 

 by M. Cuvier, after other naturalists, as the name of a distinct class of 

 other animals. 



XI. Cetacea : cetaceous. Feet fin-like. Manates or lamantins, dol- 

 phins, cachalots, whales, and narwhals. 



We have thus run rapidly over a map of the diflferent classes and kinds 

 of animals as they are found extant in our own day. But those traced in 

 a living state in our own day are by no means the whole that have existed 

 formerly. In the lecture on Geology, in the preceding series,* we had 

 occasion to observe that the various formations of rock, and especially 

 the transition formations, open to us very numerous examples of whole 

 families now no longer in existence ; many of which have probably ceased 

 to exist for several thousands of years ; some of which indeed are so far 

 removed from the races of the present day, as to require the invention of 

 new genera, if not of new orders, in a zoological arrangement for their 

 reception. 



Stukeley, Lister, and other paleologists and naturalists of the last cen- 

 tury, paid no small attention to this subject, and dragged forth the unrecog- 

 nised relics of various animals from their fossil abodes : but it has since 

 been pursued with extraordinary spirit and activity by the concurrent 

 labours of Karg, Schlottheim, Fischer, Espen, Collini, Blumenbach, 

 Humboltlt, Werner, Buckland, and above all others, Cuvier ; insomuch 

 that the ascertained lost kinds bid fair in process of time to be almost as 

 numerous as those that are livirig. 



The last physiologist is well known to have formed a most valuable and 

 extensive museum for the reception and arrangement of fossil animal re- 

 mains ; and so rich and varied in his possession, that he has commenced 

 and made a considerable progress in a classification for systematically dis- 

 tinguishing them. The alluvial soil of our own country has furnished 

 him with numerous examples ; the shell-marl and peat-bogs of Ireland 

 with one or two of still more striking character, and particularly with spe- 

 cimens, more or less perfect, of its enormous elk, one of the most cele* 

 brated of all the fossil ruminating animals. The Mediterranean coast„ 



* Ser. I. Lect. VI, 



