A nimals and their Diet . 
[October, 
5S0 
distinct mammalian orders. Others would maintain that 
an animal which feeds upon the eggs of birds is not on that 
account carnivorous, since eggs are not flesh. To get rid of 
all this confusion we must for once “ do the thing our soul 
hates,” and propose a new word. Let us call creatures 
which feed upon animal matter, of whatever kind, zoo- 
phagous. With the vegetable feeders there is a somewhat 
similar confusion. It. is not stridtly accurate, e.g ., to call a 
being which lives on fruits or seeds “ herbivorous.” Hence 
it is the safest to speak of all animals which feed upon 
vegetable matter as phytophagous — a term already in use. 
This being then understood, we turn to the subject itself. 
If, as every one must admit, plants came into being upon 
our globe earlier than animals, then, as Mr. Allinson con- 
tends, the first forms of animal life must have nourished 
themselves upon vegetable matter. Hence the question 
when and how animals became zoophagous is perfectly 
legitimate. 
But at the same time we must recognise that among ver- 
tebrate animals, and especially among Mammalia, the earliest 
forms seem to have been zoophagous. Among fishes, am- 
phibians, and reptiles, even in the earlier geological epochs, 
the vegetable feeders are found in a minority. The earliest 
birds — such as Archceopteryx, Hesperornis , Ichthyornis, and 
Apatornis , which approach nearest to reptiles, and which 
were probably all armed with teeth — were plainly fitted for 
a predatory life. Among mammals the lowest and earliest 
forms are decidedly zoophagous. This is the case with the 
monotrematous genera Echidna and Ornithorhynchus , and 
also with not a few of the marsupials, both recent and fossil. 
The oldest of the true placental mammals are the Insedtivora, 
including the hedgehog, the shrews, moles, &c. Yet few of 
these animals partake of vegetable food, save under the 
pressure of necessity. Nor do they by any means confine 
their depredations to insedts. The hedgehog merits the 
favouring notice of man as being a destroyer of vipers, but 
at the same time it excites the wrath of the sporting world 
by its raids upon the eggs of the pheasant and partridge, 
and even upon the young birds and upon leverets, and is, for 
his size, as clearly a beast of prey as is the tiger. 
It may even be permissible to ask whether among the 
mammals the purely phytophagous forms have not been 
developed from a zoophagous, or at least from an omnivo- 
rous, stock ? The only large group which, according to our 
present knowledge, contains no zoophagous or omnivorous 
members, is the old order Ruminantia. Now this sub-order, 
