THE CARNIVORA.

CASSELL’S NATURAL HISTORY.

LION OF GUZERAT.

The Carnivora—Division into Terrestrial (Fissipedia) and Aquatic (Pinnipedia)—Introductory Remarks on theFISSIPEDIA—Their Relations to Man and to other Animals—Their Distribution over the Surface of the Globe—Their Structure—The Diversity of their Form and Habits—Their Division into Lesser Groups—THECATFAMILY—Their Geographical and Chronological Distribution—Their Skeleton—The Peculiarities of their Skull, Teeth, &c.

The Carnivora, or flesh-eating Mammals, form a fourth order of the Mammalia, and are divided into two great groups, or sub-orders as they are called by zoologists, one terrestrial, and the other aquatic. The first is the group of theFissipedia, or “split-feet,” so called from the fact that the feet are divided into well-marked toes; the second is the group of thePinnipedia, or “fin-feet” (Seals, &c.), so called from the fact that the toes are bound together by skin, forming fins or flippers rather than feet.

This group, which comprises all the great “beasts of prey,” is one of the most compact, as well as one of the most interesting among the Mammalia. So many of the animals contained in it havebecome “familiar in our mouths as household words,” bearing as they do an important part in fable, in travel, and even in history: so many of them are of such wonderful beauty, so many of such terrible ferocity, that no one can fail to be interested in them, even apart from the fact likely to influence us more in their favour than any other—that the two home pets which of all others are the commonest and the most interesting belong to the group.

No one who has had a Dog friend, no one who has watched the wonderful instance of maternal love afforded by a Cat with her kittens, no one who loves riding across country after a Fox, no lady with a taste for handsome furs, no boy who has read of Lion and Tiger hunts, and has longed to emulate the doughty deeds of the hunter, can fail to be interested in an assemblage which furnishes animals at once so useful, so beautiful, and so destructive.

It must not be supposed from the name of this group that all its members are exclusively flesh-eaters—and, indeed, it will be hardly necessary to warn the reader against falling into this mistake, as there are few people who have never given a Dog a biscuit, or a Bear a bun. Still, both the Dog and several kinds of Bears prefer flesh-meat when they can get it; but there are some Bears which live almost exclusively on fruit, and are therefore in strictness not carnivorous at all. The name must, however, be taken as a sort of general title for a certain set of animals which have certain characters in common, and which differ from all other animals in particular ways.

Comparatively few of the flesh-eaters are of direct use to man, at any rate while alive, yet one member of the group—the Dog—is the most useful of all domestic quadrupeds, though derived from one of the most savage of all—the Wolf. The Ferret, the Cheetah and the Cat are also more or less domesticated; but they come far below the Dog in amiable qualities, and in value to man. Below their value in service comes the use of their most beautiful skins; and still lower down the scent, derivable from a few species. Yet from these two last sources our fair ones seek to derive new charms, not heeding the poet Cowley’s quaint objurgation:—

“The adorning thee with so much artIs but a dangerous skill;Like to the poisoning of a dart,Too apt, before, to kill.”

“The adorning thee with so much art

Is but a dangerous skill;

Like to the poisoning of a dart,

Too apt, before, to kill.”

Most of the Carnivora may be looked upon as man’s natural enemies, for he has no chance of making headway unless he can keep “the beast of the field” from “increasing upon him.” Amongst primæval men, the tribes who made the best weapons to keep off these, the destroyers of their families, were certain to succeed best in the struggle for existence, so that the act of sharpening a flint-stone to repel the attack of some wild beast may be said to have prepared the way for civilisation, for flint knives led to bronze hatchets, bronze hatchets to axes and hammers of iron, and when once iron-working was understood and appreciated, civilisation went on with gigantic strides.

Besides acting as one of the severest of schoolmasters in the hard school of adversity in which man has been trained, the flesh-eaters serve to keep in check, and indirectly to bring to perfection, the grass-eating tribes. Upon these—the Oxen, Antelopes, Wild Asses, &c.—the large Carnivora delight to prey; in so doing they have to put forth all their powers, their agility, strength, and cunning, while the Herbivores, at the same time, have acquired caution and swiftness of foot in the highest degree, in order to escape from their ruthless and implacable destroyers.

While the larger beasts of prey keep in check the troops of great hoofed animals, the smaller kinds, such as Cats and Ferrets, have a most important office in thinning the constantly multiplying ranks of gnawing animals, such as Rats and Mice, which would otherwise prove a plague of the worst description. Indirectly, too, our Carnivora may even influence largely the spread of certain kinds of vegetation: for instance, as Mr. Darwin has shown, where there are no Cats there is no clover! This seems strange, not to say fabulous, but it is known that clover will only flourish when there are plenty of Humble-bees, the only insects able to carry the fertilising pollen from flower to flower, and so ensure a good supply of seed for the next crop. Now, Field Mice are particularly hostile to Humble-bees, knowing quite well where to find their nests and combs, and how to get at their honey, of which they are very fond. Thus, where Field Mice exist in great numbers, Humble-bees will be comparatively few. But Mice are chiefly kept down by Cats, andso the end of this biological “house that Jack built” is that to ensure a good crop of clover it is advisable to have plenty of Cats about!

The conception of the fearful struggle for existence going on between beast and beast has been caught by Shakspere in a wonderful passage in his “Timon of Athens.” Apemantus would “give the world to the beasts to be rid of the men,” whereupon Timon asks him whether he would have himself “fall in the confusion of men, and remain a beast with the beasts.” Apemantus answers in the affirmative, and Timon’s rejoinder is as follows: “A beastly ambition, which the gods grant thee to attain to! If thou wert the Lion, the Fox would beguile thee: if thou wert the Lamb, the Fox would eat thee: if thou wert the Fox, the Lion would suspect thee, when, peradventure, thou wert accused by the Ass: if thou wert the Ass, thy dulness would torment thee, and still thou livedst but as a breakfast to the Wolf: if thou wert the Wolf, thy greediness would afflict thee, and oft thou shouldst hazard thy life for thy dinner: wert thou the Unicorn, pride and wrath would confound thee, and make thine own self the conquest of thy fury: wert thou a Bear, thou wouldst be killed by the Horse: wert thou a Horse, thou wouldst be seized by the Leopard: wert thou a Leopard, thou wert german to the Lion, and the spots of thy kindred were jurors on thy life: all thy safety were remotion, and thy defence, absence.” To learn the truth of these words, one has only to turn to any book of travel in Africa or India, where one is certain to read of a wholesale destruction which it is melancholy to think of.

In Great Britain this conflict is a thing of the past; but two terrible enemies of man even there have been extirpated within the historic period—namely, the Wolf and the Bear; of these and of their extirpation we shall speak when we come to describe those types. Now, happily, these greedy Carnivora are “scattered and peeled—meted out and trodden down.” Far in the north of the island there is the wild Cat, the two Martens are becoming scarcer and scarcer; the Badger is found here and there; the Polecat is rare; so that the Fox, the Stoat, and the Weasel—the last being the very least and meanest of the order alone are common.

But in the later geological epoch—pre-historic as to us—the nobler types abounded, and Great Britain was then as much the land of savage beasts as Africa and India are now.

The Carnivora are found all over the world, from the equator to the poles: in most parts of the globe they are abundant, the great exception being the Australian region of zoological geography, namely, the immense island of Australia, which can only boast of a Dog, doubtfully native, and New Zealand and the adjacent Polynesian Islands, which are quite devoid of members of the group, the native Dog of New Zealand having probably been recently introduced.

Many forms have become extinct, and, as we shall see when we come to speak of these bygone creatures, the lower we dig in the strata which compose the rocks of which our earth is made, the lower do the types become, that is to say, among the extinct Carnivora we have no animals so perfectly constructed for flesh-eating as the Cat family, for instance, but the various kinds get nearer and nearer, the lower we go, to what may be called the general plan of Mammalian structure, and farther and farther from the special type of structure found in the higher Carnivores of the present day.

There is considerable range of size among the various members of the group, the Lion and Tiger being the largest, the Weasel and Suricate the smallest. As to their habits, the Carnivore are very varied; leaving out as we do for the present the fin-footed Seals, Sea Bears, and Walruses, we yet have the semi-aquatic Otter and theEnhydra, or Sea Otter, both at home in the watery element, and most expert swimmers and divers; but for the most part the flesh-eaters are inhabitants of the copse, the jungle, and the forest. Many are nimble climbers, some are arboreal in their habits, living entirely in trees, and most are crepuscular, that is, hunt their prey after dusk.

As to their diet, we mentioned above that they are by no means all flesh-eaters; in fact there is every gradation from those which live exclusively on animal food, such as the Lion, Tiger, &c., to the purely herbivorous kinds of Bear. Some again, such as the Cat family, seem to prefer flesh-meat, others, such as the Otter, adopt a Lenten diet, and feed on fish or eggs. This matter, however, is, of course, largely determined by the habitat of the animal, those whose habitation is inland being compelled to devour land animals, while those living by the sea or by river-banks usually take to fish either occasionally or as a regular thing.

Turning to the structure of the group, one of the first things that strikes us is the looseness of their skin, which, instead of being stretched on the body as tightly as a drum parchment, as it is ingrass-eaters—for instance, the Ox or Hippopotamus—is quite “baggy,” having between it and the flesh of the beast a layer of the loosest possible fibres. It is for this reason that the skin of any but averyfat Dog can be pinched up so readily, while of a Herbivore it may be said, in the words of eulogy uttered by Mr. Squeers of his son Wackford, “Here’s firmness, here’s solidness! why you can hardly get up enough of him between your fingers and thumb to pinch him anywheres.” In consequence of this the operation of skinning a Lion or Bear is a comparatively easy one. After the first cut the beast may bepulledout of his skin, almost without further use of the knife; while with an Antelope or an Ox the skin has to becutaway carefully and laboriously from the underlying flesh.

The use of this loose skin will be very evident to any one who will take the trouble to watch the great Cats playing together at the Zoological Gardens. They are continually scratching one another, but the loose skin is dragged round by the claws which, in consequence, can get no hold, and do no harm; with a tight skin, on the other hand, the slightest scratch of such a claw as a Tiger’s would cause a serious wound. The looseness of the skin is very evident in the Puma and Jaguar, in which it hangs in a fold along the middle of the belly, like a great dewlap.

In the Carnivora the skeleton, or bony framework of the body, attains its utmost perfection, both as atissueand as machinery. Its tissue is dense, white, and ivory-like, every bone is exquisitely moulded and polished, so that there are few more beautiful objects of study than a well-prepared Cat’s skeleton, and almost none more instructive or better calculated to give an idea of the perfection of “animal mechanics.” The flexibility and strength of the spine, the exquisite fitting of its joints, the small head capable of being turned in almost any direction in the search for prey or the avoidance of danger, the wonderful arrangement of levers afforded by the limbs, which exhibit at once the greatest amount of strength and the greatest amount of elasticity, all combine to fill the mind with wonder and admiration, as great as that excited by the most perfect work of art or the most stupendous phenomenon of inanimate nature.

UPPER VIEW OF LION’S SKULL.

The skull of nearly all Carnivora is distinguished from that of most other Mammals by its immense strength, and its evident adaptation to the habits of its possessor—to the effective seizing and devouring of living prey. It is remarkable for the immense roughened bony ridges, developed in many parts of it, which serve for the attachment of the mighty jaw-muscles, the great size of which causes an increase in the width of the bonyjugal arch, extending from under the eye to just in front of the ear. Another point worthy of notice is the great shortening of the jaws, or of thefacialin relation to thecranialportions of the skull. In this respect Carnivores, especially the most typical forms, the Cats, are very markedly distinguished from Herbivores, in which the brain-case is small and the face immensely prolonged. This has to do with the different kind of food used by the two groups—that of vegetable-eaters requiring long grinding, that of flesh-eaters powerful mincing. Connected also with this same function of mastication is the form of thecondyle, or bony projection of the lower jaw, by which it moves on the skull, and of the smooth surface of the latter which receives it. These are in Carnivora greatly elongated transversely, and narrowed from before backwards, so that no motion from side to side, but only an up-and-down motion, is possible. The higher Carnivora, therefore, cannotcheworgrindtheir food, but onlyminceit, their sharp teeth acting exactly like scissor-blades. In the interior of the skull should be noticed a large plate of bone which extends inwards and separates the great brain, or cerebrum, from the lesser brain, or cerebellum, and prevents the jarring of that important organ likely to arise from the animal’s vigorous movements.

SKELETON OF LION.

In the spine, or vertebral column, there is not much to notice beyond the great size of the first two vertebræ, or those which support the head, and the development of strong spines or processes for the attachment of muscles.

SKELETON OF POLAR BEAR.

In the limbs there are certain points of considerable interest and importance. If a Bear and a Lion be watched while walking, a great difference will be observed in their gait: the Bear’s movements are far clumsier and less springy than those of the Lion. A little further observation will show that this is due, chiefly, to the manner in which their feet are set on the limbs, for it will be seen that the Bear keeps the sole of his foot flat on the ground, and, as his foot is very large, he has something of the awkward, sprawling movement of a man walking in shoes too big for him. The Lion, on the other hand, has his wrist and his heel lifted well above the ground, and so walks, not on the sole of his foot, but on his toes, the under surfaces of which are furnished with beautifully soft leathery pads, so as to ensure a soft, silent footstep. Then what looks like the knee of a Lion, Cat, or Dog is really hiswrist.and what looks like a backward turned knee in his hind leg is his heel, the true elbow and knee being almost hidden by the skin.

The reason of this arrangement is seen by looking at the skeletons of the two animals. In the Bear themetacarpalsandmetatarsals, or five long bones extending between the wrist and the ankle respectively, and the joints of the toes, are kept in a horizontal position, as in ourselves; in the Lion, on the contrary, the metacarpals and metatarsals are lifted almost into a vertical position, the walking surface being now afforded by the under surface of the toe-bones, or phalanges. By reason of this the Lion gets an extra lever in his leg, in addition to the two levers which the Bear possesses, namely, those afforded by the bones of the arm and fore-arm and of the thigh and leg respectively; and consequently his springiness is greatly increased. An animal which walks like the Bear, on the sole of its foot, is said to beplantigrade: one which walks on its fingers, like the Lion, Cat, or Dog, is calleddigitigrade.

As in all animals in which the fore limbs are used for support, and not for prehension, the collar-bone, or clavicle, is either wholly absent or quite rudimentary, and the fore limb has therefore no bony connection with the trunk, but is attached simply by muscles and ligaments. The Carnivores, in leaping or running, often come down with their whole weight upon the fore legs, and if a large bony clavicle, like that of a Monkey or Bat, were present, it would infallibly be broken.

The bones are all strongly bound together by elastic bands, orligaments, and are covered by the great fibrous masses, ormuscles, which, forming as they do the flesh, take the chief share in giving to each animal its characteristic shape. These muscles are, in most instances, attached to the bones by strong cords or bands resembling the ligaments, and calledtendons. The bones being, in great measure, articulated or jointed to one another by smooth surfaces, sometimes flat, sometimes round, sometimes pulley-like, act as levers. The muscles are usually attached at one end to a fixed at the other to a movable bone; when they act, by shortening in length and widening in diameter, they make the more movable bone to turn upon the other. In this way they cause the limbs to be straightened or bent, the jaws to be opened or shut, the claws extended or retracted, and perform all the other movements of which the animal is capable. The development of the muscles in the larger Carnivora is wonderfully great. A Lion will kill an Ox with a blow of his paw, and drag it off to his lair as easily as his humble relation, the Cat, disposes of a Rat or Mouse.

We now have to consider a most important series of organs—the organs ofalimentationornutrition; those, in fact, which serve the purposes of taking in, preparing, and digesting the food. They are the mouth with its tongue, teeth, and salivary glands, the gullet, stomach, and intestines, with the liver, and sweetbread, or pancreas.

We are all familiar in ourselves withfourkinds of teeth, namely (1), the “incisors,” or cutting teeth, in front; (2), the “canines,” the pointed eye-teeth that come next; (3), the “false grinders,” or “premolars;” and (4), the true grinders, or “molars.” Man has a very even and full-mouthed series; the Carnivora, on the other hand, possess a most irregular series, and in this series there are certain gaps or interspaces. Our own even orderly set is best adapted for a mixed diet, that has for the most part undergone a great amount of change by cooking. But the Carnivora, in their wild state, must eat flesh raw, and for the most part reeking, and this has to be torn from the conquered prey. So that the teeth have to be applicable to the first, or destructive process, and then to the tearing to pieces of the fleshly substance, and the scraping of the bones; they may even have to crush the bones themselves, the more spongy parts serving for food; and, greatest feat of all, to break the hardest long bones for the succulent marrow.

The mode of feeding and the form and number of the teeth of necessity correspond: tearing and gnawing are processes that need teeth like knives and scissors, while grinding or chewing require teeth like millstones. Both these kinds exist in the Bear. In the Dog the crushing teeth become less in size and importance; in the Lion they are suppressed, and all the teeth have a cutting character, their number being at the same time much reduced.

The teeth are often all that remains of certain extinct creatures; they are, therefore, a most important part of the anatomy of an animal, as well as being of great service in the matter of classification or grouping. They are the hardest of all the organs; their relation to the food of thespecies, and their necessary correlation to the digestive organs, makes them serve as a key to the rest of the creature’s structure, which structure is in absolute harmony with its habits and daily life.

STOMACH OF LION.

The tongue is covered with horny projections, or papillæ, and in the Cat tribe serves as a rasp to rub and scrape off the smaller fragments of flesh from the bones. The stomach is always simple, that is, consists of a bagpipe-like cavity not divided into compartments, as in the Ruminants and some other animals. A great difference from herbivorous animals is also seen in the length of the intestine. As the food is of a highly nourishing nature it requires less time for its digestion, and a smaller surface for its absorption into the blood, and the intestine is therefore remarkably short—not more than three times the length of the body in the Lion and Wild Cat, instead of being fifteen to thirty times the length, as in some vegetable feeders. The Carnivora have, therefore, the manifest advantage of a more compact and smaller “barrel” than the Herbivora, and, in consequence, have less weight to carry, and are slim and slender-waisted.

As might naturally be expected, the organs by which the blood, loaded with nourishment from the digestive canal, is carried to all parts of the body, are well developed. The heart, if not “as hard as the nether millstone,” is yet compact and strong in the highest degree: the circulation is vigorous, and the result is seen in great courage and astonishing powers of endurance.

BRAIN OF DOG.

In the lungs, with the windpipe and larynx, in which the multitudinous cries of the group—barks, howls, roars, and whines—are produced, there is nothing to merit any special mention.

The brain of Carnivora is, as a rule, remarkably large and well formed, in conformity with their high degree of intelligence. Its surface is thrown into well-marked ridges with intervening depressions, and presents a great contrast with the almost smooth brain of a Shrew or a Hedgehog. From it are given off nerves to the tongue, teeth, skin, muscles, and other parts of the head, as well as some to organs at a considerable distance from the head, as the heart, lungs, and stomach, and, most important of all, three pairs of nerves, one for each of the organs of the higher senses—the nose, eye, and ear.

LONGITUDINAL SECTION THROUGH A DOG’S NOSE, SHOWING THE SPONGY BONES. (Nat. Size. From a Sketch by T. J. Parker)a.The smelling region;b.The sneezing region;c.A bristle passed through the nostril into the nasal chamber; d. A bristle passed from the nasal chamber into the passage by which the latter communicates with the mouth.

LONGITUDINAL SECTION THROUGH A DOG’S NOSE, SHOWING THE SPONGY BONES. (Nat. Size. From a Sketch by T. J. Parker)

a.The smelling region;b.The sneezing region;c.A bristle passed through the nostril into the nasal chamber; d. A bristle passed from the nasal chamber into the passage by which the latter communicates with the mouth.

The two nerves of smell pass through a beautifully-perforated bone—hence called the “sieve-bone,” orethmoid—and proceed one on each side of a bony and gristly wall which divides the two nasal chambers from one another, to a delicate membrane covering a pair of bones of wonderful complexity—a labyrinth which must be seen to be understood, for the beautiful manner in which it enfolds itself can hardly be imagined. These “spongy-bones,” as they are called, the membrane covering which forms the true organ ofsmell, lie in the upper and hinder part of each nasal cavity, but in front of them is a large scroll of bone, also covered by a membrane of exquisite sensitiveness, but not taking cognisance of odours. This anti-chamber, as it were, of the nose, is extremely sensitive, and its sensibility is a safeguard against intrusive dust, and deadly disease-germs. It is thesneezingregion, and is the natural and most careful porter of the gates of the breath.

The way in which the eyes of the Carnivora are set in their head indicates their habits of life. They look straight forward, and are expressive, in the nobler kinds, of the energy and cruelty of their owner’s disposition. As in many of the Lemurs, the eye possesses what is called atapetum, a sort of reflecting mirror in the bottom of the eye, which redoubles, as it were, the faint rays of evening, evidently a very important thing for these, mostly nocturnal, animals.

The sense of hearing is as perfect as that of sight; not, perhaps, in the higher, musical sense of the word, but for catching the faintest and feeblest undulations of the air. The Mole is supposed to be most sharp of hearing; but it is a question whether he is quicker of hearing than his cruel neighbour the Rabbit-killing Weasel. Any one who has watched a Cat sitting demurely by a Mouse-hole, or a Terrier on the look out for a Rat, will give these Carnivores credit for the most acute sense of sound. Anatomy corroborates what simple observation suggests, and the internal as well as external organs of hearing in the Carnivora are most exquisitely perfect.

Many members of the group live in families, that is, a male and female with their young form a littlecoterieby themselves, and associate very little with other families. Very few live in great societies or herds, after the manner of the grass-eating animals, such as Oxen, Antelopes, or Wild Horses, but an exception to this is afforded by the Wild Dogs of Constantinople, which roam the streets in great numbers, and by Wolves, which invariably hunt in packs.

The Dogs and Wolves, besides being gregarious, resemble the Herbivora in another and far less amiable characteristic, that is, they do not choose a mate for life or even for a season, but let their affections run wild and practise the most unmitigated polygamy and polyandry. Many of the larger Cats, on the contrary—the Lion, for instance—choose a mate, to whom they are wonderfully faithful.

The young are always born in a comparatively helpless condition, not able to run about at once like a new-born Calf or Foal; they are generally blind for some time after birth, and are entirely dependent on the mother for food and warmth.

The higher Carnivora are most kind parents, and to the best of their ability,educatetheir young. This was well known to the ancients: Ezekiel the prophet (xix. 2, 3) gives this character of the Lioness in inimitable language: “What is thy mother? A Lioness: she lay down among Lions, she nourished her whelps among young Lions. And she brought up one of her whelps: it became a young Lion, and it learned to catch the prey; it devoured men.” All writers bear witness to the painstaking way in which the parent Lion or Tiger trains up its young and practises them for their trade of slaughter. Sometimes both parents, sometimes only one, go out with their offspring, and by example and precept show them the safest places to hide, the proper moment to spring, the best place to seize the victim, and so on. And the future tyrants are very apt, they thoroughly enjoy their schooling, and make the best possible use of their opportunities; so much so that the young of the great Cats are far more dreaded than the old ones, as they not only kill to satisfy hunger, but commit wholesale slaughter, simply for practice and to keep their paws in.

The diversity of form and structure in the group of land Carnivora is very great. We find, as in the groups we have considered previously, many different kinds orspecies, amongst which are creatures so different as the great and powerful Lion and the small and insignificant Weasel, the active Tiger and Jaguar, and the lazy Glutton. These species, as very little observation shows us, naturally fall into certain larger groups orgenera, having important characteristics in common; for instance, the Lion, Tiger, Leopard, Jaguar, Lynx, and all the small Cats, are so much like one another, and so different from all other animals, as to be put in the one genusFelis, which is distinguished by having retractile claws, and by being quite devoid of true grinding teeth. Again, the Dog and Wolf have so many points in common, that they are placed in the single genusCanis, the Dog being calledCanis familiaris, the WolfCanis lupus. If a number of genera are found to agree pretty closely with one another in essential matters, they are grouped into afamily; thuswe have the familyMustelidæ, which includes not only the Weasel (Mustela), but a number of other genera, such as the Otter, Badger, Skunk, and many others. Furthermore, the families are conveniently grouped intosub-orders, according to characters considered to be of greater importance than those which determine genera or families. We may roughly compare this method of grouping to the way in which the soldiers in an army are arranged. Thus, individual men—corresponding to species—are arranged incompanies, which we may take to represent genera; several companies are united into aregiment, just as a number of genera are united into a family; a greater or less number of regiments go to form abattalion, in the same way as the families go to form a sub-order; and, lastly, two or three battalions constitute anarmy, which is the complete assemblage, and corresponds, in our rough illustration, to anorder.

We suppose that nine persons out of ten, if asked to give three common examples of land Carnivores, would, almost without hesitation, name the Cat, the Dog, and the Bear. The most accomplished naturalist would be unable to give a better answer to this question, as those three well-known animals are types of the three primary sections into which the whole sub-order is divided, and which may, in fact, be termed respectively the groups of the Cats, Dogs, and Bears. It must be borne in mind, however, that the words are here used in the broadest and most general sense, for the group of “Cats” includes not only the animals properly so-called, but also the Civets, Ichneumons, Hyænas, whilst amongst “Bears” are grouped Racoons, Otters, Badgers, Weasels, and many others.

It will, perhaps, be as well to give the scientific names for these three groups which we have, most unscientifically, called Cats, Dogs, and Bears. We have first theÆluroidea,[2]or Cat-like animals; next theCynoidea,[3]or Dog-like animals; and, lastly, theArctoidea,[4]or Bear-like animals. We also give below a list of the families of land Carnivores arranged under their respective sections, with the most important forms belonging to each family; as such a list will, in all probability, be useful for reference.[5]

The splitting up of our flesh-eaters into these sections is not an arbitrary matter, but is determined by certain definite anatomical characters, one of the chief of which is the structure of the base of the skull. These matters will, however, be better discussed under the various families, when we shall also devote a short time to that very important branch of anatomy, the form, number, and arrangement of the teeth.

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