6 
CARNIVORA. 
they are enabled to run much more rapidly. This 
peculiarity, though common and advantageous to 
some other animals, is absolutely necessary to those 
which live altogether on flesh, and from it they are 
called digitigrades. 
But as there are many carnivorous animals, which 
can subsist for a time at least on vegetable food, and 
to which flesh is but occasionally necessary, such are 
deprived of a portion of their powers of chase, and are 
comparatively slow moving. These, which have the 
entire sole of the hind foot denuded and callous, 
bring the heel to the ground, and are hence called 
'plantigrades. 
All the species in the order are included in one or 
the other of these two divisions ; those which are 
purely carnivorous, in a state of nature, are proper to 
the first, those which are partially so, to the second. 
Many of the plantigrade animals are small, and are 
calculated for feeding principally on insects and 
worms ; their habits of life are generally subter- 
raneous \ and their teeth very different from those 
of the animals which feed on the flesh of quadrupeds. 
On these accounts they are separated from the ge- 
neral division of plantigrades, and form a third prin- 
cipal division of the order, under the name of in- 
sectivora. 
To these three principal divisions may be added a 
fourth, sufficiently distinguishable from the rest. The 
animals included in it reside on the seashore, or on 
small islands or rocks, and visit the water occasionally 
in search of food 5 but yet they possess all the cha- 
