Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 15, 2025
Of cetacea, or whale-like mammals, sixty-five; ruminantia, or cud-chewers, one hundred and seventy-seven; pachydermata, or thick-skinned mammals, such as the horse, hog, and elephant, forty-one; edentata, like the sloth and ant-eater, thirty-five; rodentia, or gnawers, such as the rat, squirrel, and beaver, six hundred and seventeen; carnivora, or flesh-eaters, four hundred and forty-six; cheiroptera, or bats, three hundred and twenty-eight; quadrumana, or monkeys, two hundred and twenty-one; and marsupialia, or pouched mammals, like the opossum and kangaroo, one hundred and thirty-seven.
A considerable number are pachydermata, of a character approximating to the South American tapir: the names, palaeotherium, anthracotherium, anoplotherium, lophiodon, &c., have been applied to them with a consideration of more or less conspicuous peculiarities; but a description of the first may give some general idea of the whole.
Let us get back to serious conversation again. 'How did we leave it? 'It was that hog, I believe. And then Mr. Beeton. But where does the hog come in? Why should you weep over him? And what are the Lady's Observations on the Common Hog? 'Read them for yourself. Frank read out aloud: "The hog belongs to the order Mammalia, the genus sus scrofa, and the species pachydermata, or thick-skinned.
All these creatures live on vegetables, with the exception of the hog, to whom nothing comes amiss; or who, in other words, is omnivorous, like the bear, and also another member of the class Mammalia, which I do not name for fear of making you blush at your companionship. This assures you that, in the order of the Pachydermata, the digestive apparatus is very fully developed.
He told me that the first pair of rabbits imported into Australasia bred so wonderfully that within six months rabbits were so thick in the land that people had to dig trenches through them to get from town to town. He told me a great deal about worms, and the kangaroo, and other coleoptera, and said he knew the history and ways of all such pachydermata.
The paca and agouti belong to the peculiar family of the rodent order confined to South America, and which connects the Rodentia to the Pachydermata the order to which the elephant, horse, and hog belong. The fossil toxodon resembled the Rodentia in its dentition, and, at the same time, was nearly related to the elephant.
The shells of the older pliocene give from thirty-five to fifty; those of the newer, from ninety to ninety-five per cent. of existing species. The pachydermata of the preceding era now disappear, and are replaced by others belonging to still existing families elephant, hippopotamus, rhinoceros though now extinct as species. Some of these are startling, from their enormous magnitude.
The extraordinary thickness of skin which distinguishes certain animals, has induced naturalists to group them together, and call them Pachydermata.
Owen states, proves indisputably that it was intimately related to the Gnawers, the order which, at the present day, includes most of the smallest quadrupeds: in many details it is allied to the Pachydermata: judging from the position of its eyes, ears, and nostrils, it was probably aquatic, like the Dugong and Manatee, to which it is also allied.
The hog also has canines, and very strong ones; but it is in the wild state, when it is called a boar, that these appear in their real form. There we find them projecting out of the mouth with a curve, as is so commonly seen among the pachydermata, forming those terrible, sharp, and pointed tusks which have been so often fatal to the hunter.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking