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Show 182 MAMMALIA. r peram ent, and the services it renderfs., are a.l l too wb ell known to need a comment. The hoarseness o 1ts v01ce, or ray, depends upon two small peculiar cavities situated at the bottom of the larynx. E. zebra, L.; Buff. XII, i. (The Zebra.) Nearly the same form as the Ass; the whole . animal. r:gularly marked with black and white transverse str1pes, or1gmally from the whole south of Africa. We have seen a female Zebra successively produce with the Horse and the Ass. E. quaccha, Gm., Buff. Supp. VII, vii. (The Couagga.) Re. sembles the Horse more than the Zebra, but comes from the same country. The hair on the neck and shoulders is brown, with whitish transverse stripes; the croup is of a reddish grey; tail and legs whitish. The name is expressive of its voice, which resembles the barking of a Dog. E. montanus, Burchell; the Onagga or Dauw, Fred. Cuv. Mammif. (The Onagga.) An African species, smaller than the Ass, but having the beautiful form of the Couagga; its colour is a light bay, with black stripes, alternately wider and narrower, on the head, neck and body. Those behind slant obliquely forwards; legs and tail white. ORDER VIII. RUMIN ANTIA. (1) This order is perhaps the most natural and best determined of the class, for nearly all the animals which compose it have the appearance of being constructed on the same model, the Camels alone presenting some trifling exceptions to the gene· ral characters. The first of these characters is the total absence of incisors in the upper jaw, they being found only in the lower one, and nearly always eight in number. A callous pad is substituted fur them above. Between the incisors and the molars is a va· cant space, where, in some genera only, are found one or t~o canini. The molars, almost always six throughout, have theJr (1) The P.tconA, Lin. RUMINANTIA. 183 crown marked with two double crescents, the convexity of which is turned inwards in the upper, and outwards in the lower ones. The four feet are terminated by two toes and two hoofs which face each other by a flat surface presenting the appear~ ance of a single hoof which has been cleft, whence the name of cloven-footed, bifurcated, &c. which is applied to these animals. Behind the hoof are sometimes found two small spurs, the vestiges of lateral toes. The two bones of the metatarsus and metacarpus are united into one called the cannon, but in certain species there are also vestiges of lateral metatarsal and metacarpal bones. The term Ruminantia indicates the singular faculty possessed by these animals of masticating their food a second time, by bringing it back to the mouth after a first deglutition. This faculty depends upon the structure of their stomachs, of which they always have four, the three first being so disposed that the food may enter into either of them, the resophagus terminating at the point of communication. The first and largest is called the paunch; it receives a large quantity of vegetable matters coarsely bruised by a first mastication. From this it passes into the second, called the honeycomb or bonnet, the parietes of which are laminated like a honeycomb. This second stomach, very small and globular, seizes the food, moistens and compresses it into little pellets, which afterwards successively ascend to the mouth to be r~·chewed. The animal remains at rest during this operation, which lasts until all the food first taken into the paunch has been submitted to it. The aliment thus re-masticated descends directly into the third stomach called the leaflet, (Jeuillet) on account of its parietes being longitudinally laminated or like the leaves of a book ; and thence to the fourth or the caillette, the sides of which are wrinkled, and which is the true organ of digestion, analogous to the simple stomach of animals in general. In the young Ruminantia, or ~0 long as they SD;bsist on the milk of the mother, the caillette 18 th~ ~argest of the four. The paunch is only developed by rcceivmg increased quantities of grass, which finally give it |