The Canadian Naturalist and Geologist Volume 3

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: ing on fud, water plants or the grass of the shore. There is much in the organization of this order that indicates its affinity to members of the succeeding division. In the Ungulata the four limbs are present, but that portion of the toe which touches the ground is incased in a hoof, which blunts its sensibility and deprives the foot of prehensile power. With the limbs restricted to support and locomotion, the UngiUata have no clavicles; the fore-leg remains constantly in the state of pronation, and they feed on vegetables. The third division of the Gyrencephala enjoy a. higher degree of the sense of touch through the greater number and mobility of the digits, and the smaller extent to which they are covered by horny matter. This substance forms a single plate, in the shape of a claw or nail, which is applied to only one of the surfaces of the extremity of the digit, leaving the other, usually the lower, surface possessed of its tactile faculty; whence the name Ungui- culala, applied to this group, however, is more restricted and natural than the group to which Linnaeus extended the term. All the species are ' diphyodont, ' and the teeth have a simple investment of enamel. The first order, Carnivora, includes the beasts of prey, properly so called. With the exception of a few Seal?, the incisors are Its in number; the canines;z;, always longer than the other teeth, and usually exhibiting a full and' perfect development as 'ethal weapone; the molars graduate from a trenchant to a tuber- culate form, in proportion as the diet deviates from one strictfy of flesh to one of a more miscellaneous kind. The clavicle is rudi- mental or absent; the innermost digit is often rudimental or absent; they have no vesiculrc seminales; the teats are abdominal i the placenta is zonular....