16 
SYSTEM OF NATURE. 
dissimilar tribes : all appear to have fed exclusively on 
vegetables : the sloth ran along the boughs, devouring the 
leaves around him : the Megatherium was endowed with 
strength to uproot the giants of the forest with his tremen¬ 
dous claws, and he doubtless delighted in the crashing ruin: 
the elephant, by means of his extraordinary and singularly 
extensible trunk, drew down the branches, snapped them 
off, and, keeping them steady on the ground by the weight 
of his ponderous foot, stripped them of their verdure. 
The divisions of Belluae appear to require much consi¬ 
deration, and I scarcely feel inclined to subscribe to those 
in common use. Although unwilling to dissent from the 
views of Cuvier, I must confess that some of his combina¬ 
tions of those animals with which I am acquainted, as Hip¬ 
popotamus with Sus, appear to be rather questionable : 
again, his separation of Sus from Anoplotherium seems 
scarcely natural. The Linnean idea of separating the 
ruminants from the other Belluae, although adopted by 
Cuvier, seems to me very objectionable, more especially as 
this illustrious naturalist has himself, in his * Ossemens 
Fossiles,’ so clearly pointed out their extreme similarity. 
His opinions on this interesting subject, as enforced by 
Professor Owen in a recent number of the Athenaeum, are 
so exactly in accordance with my own views that I shall 
quote them at length. “Cuvier says of the teeth of 
the Anoplotherium gracile, that they present a structure 
which closely approximates them to their analogues in the 
ruminants (Ossemens Fossiles, 4to. t. iii. p. 61): of the 
molar teeth in the smaller Anoplotheres, constituting the 
subgenus Dichobune, Cuvier observes, that ‘ they still 
more nearly approach the molars of the ruminants,’ (loc. 
cit. p. 63): he describes the interval between the molars 
