CLASS I. MAMMALIA: ORDER 9. RUMINANTIA. 
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ORDER 9. RTTMINTANTIA. 
We now corae to those aniinals which cJiew the cud, and Avhich are therefore called Ruminantia. 
They are, of all others, those which are most useful to man : they furnish him with food, and 
nearly all the flesh he consumes ; some serve him as beasts of burden or draught ; others with their 
milk, their tallow, leather, horns, hair, wool, and other products. The Ruminantia were regarded 
by Cuvier as the most natural and the best determined order of the class, for all the species which 
compose it appear to have been constructed on the same model, the camels alone presenting some 
inconsiderable exceptions to the general characteristics of the group. 
The first of these characteristics is that of having no incisors in the upper jaw, while the infe- 
rior has always eight, the two outermost of which represent canines. They are replaced above 
by a callous pad. Between the incisors and the molars is a wide space, where, in some genera, 
there are one or two canines. The molars, almost always six in number above and below, have 
their crown marked with two double crescents, the convexity of Avhich is turned inward m the 
upper, and outward in the lower jaw. The fore-feet are each terminated by two toes and by two 
hoofs, which present a flat surface to each other, appearing as though a single hoof had been cleft ; 
hence the names that have been applied to these animals of "cloven-footed," "bifurcated," &c. 
Behind the hoof there are always two small spurs, which are vestiges of lateral toes. The two 
bones of the metacarpus and metatarsus are united into a single one, designated as the cannon-hone, 
but in certain species there are also vestiges of lateral, metacarpal, and metatarsal bones. 
The name Rumiyiantia intimates the singular faculty possessed by these animals of chewing the 
cud, that is, of masticating their food a second time, it being returned to the mouth for this pur- 
pose after the first deglutition. This faculty depends on the structure of their stomachs, which 
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