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LIFE, IN ITS HIGHER FORMS. 
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 gieat 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 diftering 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 “ 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 
