CARNIVORA. 
monkeys being mere varieties of mankind), that, 
however they may resemble us in body, we are as far 
removed from them in intellect, as from any other 
animal : an observation confirmed progressively by 
experience, as farther opportunity has been afforded 
of learning their real intellectual pretensions. 
The animals at present under consideration, though 
scarcely less interesting, give birth to very different 
reflections. The burlesque sedateness of the apes, the 
amusing vivacity of the monkeys, and the lubricity 
and general malevolence, which characterise, more 
or less, the various baboons, must now give place to 
another theme. In the carnivora nature assumes a 
different aspect; all is violence and bloodshed, ra- 
pacity and death. 
A very considerable proportion of the animal 
world might be included under the epithet carni- 
vorous. Indeed, if the word be taken largely, there 
is scarcely one of the orders, from which many genera 
must not be transferred to this ; but the limited sense, 
in which it is here used, confines it to quadrupeds, 
and to those exclusively, which subsist altogether, or 
principally, on animal food, and are constantly at war 
with all their inferiors in strength to obtain sus- 
tenance, whence they may properly be called beasts 
of prey. 
It is surely one of the greatest mysteries of Nature, 
that this murderous necessity should exist; and if we 
look to revelation for a clew to assist us in escaping 
the labyrinth, in which our thoughts on this sub- 
ject are involved, the most useful answer we can 
