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For several days, whenever she made her appearance in the garden, she was set upon by the blackbirds, and at length became so much afraid of them, that she scampered to a place of security whenever she saw them approach." "That was very bold indeed, Uncle Thomas. Birds seem to be all very much attached to their young." "Very much so, Harry; but perhaps not more so than many quadrupeds.
"Yes," she replied. "What a convenient thing it would be if all thieves had the same shape! It's so confusing to have some of them quadrupeds and others bipeds!" "It has occurred to me," said Arthur, "as a curious problem in Teleology the Science of Final Causes," he added, in answer to an enquiring look from Lady Muriel. "And a Final Cause is ?"
Seeds are disseminated by their minuteness, by their capsule being converted into a light balloon-like envelope, by being embedded in pulp or flesh, formed of the most diverse parts, and rendered nutritious, as well as conspicuously coloured, so as to attract and be devoured by birds, by having hooks and grapnels of many kinds and serrated awns, so as to adhere to the fur of quadrupeds, and by being furnished with wings and plumes, as different in shape as they are elegant in structure, so as to be wafted by every breeze.
The huts are so very small, that there is only sufficient room for one: we shall kill nothing, and be laughed at into the bargain." "But these terrible quadrupeds; what if they should come and devour me when you are gone?" "I tell you you have nothing to fear."
No accident, however, occurred either to the quadrupeds or bipeds, who appeared respectively to be quite au fait in their business, and extricated themselves with the greatest ease from places in which Pharaoh and all his host would have gone to the bottom. Nightfall brought us to Peterborough, and from thence we were not slow in reaching the place of our destination.
It certainly is a menagerie, for these remains were not brought here by a deluge. The animals to which they belonged roamed on the shores of this subterranean sea, under the shade of those arborescent trees. Here are entire skeletons. And yet I cannot understand the appearance of these quadrupeds in a granite cavern."
In the summer, too, horses were added to her pensioners and invited in to graze on the patch of enclosed grass at the back of the cottage, till it fell short from being burned up or eaten, for the common was haunted with gaunt, famished quadrupeds, who, in the drought of summer, were still left to look for the mockery of subsistence on the bare, parched ground.
They were stout and thick, the hinder ones appearing much shorter than the fore-legs; but this was because the creature in its hind feet was plantigrade, that is, it walked with the whole of its soles touching the surface, which only bears and a few other sorts of quadrupeds do. Its fore-feet, too, were oddly placed upon the ground.
He preys only on the smallest quadrupeds, and with all his voracity he is an arrant poltroon. A child of ten years will easily put him to flight. A second species is the hyena which so much annoyed the celebrated Bruce while travelling in Abyssinia, and may be appropriately named "Bruce's hyena."
But though they use all their limbs as walking organs, they show no tendency to revert to the habit of the quadrupeds. Their motion is like that of the gibbon when in haste, a series of jumps or swings between the supporting arms.
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