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It is the Cercoleptes caudivolvus of zoologists, and has been considered by some authors as an intermediate form between the Lemur family of apes and the plantigrade Carnivora, or Bear family.
Nay, there were broad-footed tracks in the snow only two years previously, which could not be mistaken; the black bear alone could have set that plantigrade seal, and little children must come home early from school and play, for he is an indiscriminate feeder when he is hungry, and a little child would not come amiss when other game was wanting.
Substantial food, less fleeting, however, than a lettuce or other sandwich and a dainty trifle of pastry; protective clothing; a house, or even a cave, to shelter us in cold or stormy weather these, evidently, are clearly apprehended necessities, and we will march on the soles of our feet, like the plantigrade creatures we are, wherever such goods are obtainable.
Now, in my opinion," continued Alexis, "there is not the slightest necessity for calling these numerous species of animals even `little bears. They are not bears in any sense of the word: having scarce any other resemblance to the noble Bruin than their plantigrade feet.
Of all this we can know nothing: but of one thing we may feel assured, which is that the plantigrade foot is the only one that could have developed into a grasping organ; such a development being impossible to the digitigrade or the hoofed animals. One can readily see how the habit of walking on the sole might tend to a spreading of the toes, in order to obtain a wider and firmer footing.
Of course bruin varies much, according to the climate in which he lives, and the conditions of his life, but all the way from the poles to the tropics he retains certain characteristics that always proclaim him a bear. He is a plantigrade, walking like a man upon the soles of his feet.
Bears, furthermore, have five digits on each foot and are plantigrade, while dogs have but four toes behind and are digitigrade. These differences are less marked in some of the smaller arctoids, which may have as few as thirty-two teeth, and come very near to dogs in the extent of the digital surface which rests upon the ground in walking.
"Precisely so," replied Alexis; "and hence he is termed a plantigrade animal, to distinguish him from those other kinds, as horses, oxen, swine, dogs, cats, and so forth, that all, in reality, step upon their toes." "There are some other plantigrade animals besides bears?" said Ivan, interrogatively; "our badger and glutton, for instance?" "Yes," answered the naturalist.
So I didn't say anything, and soon liked him very well indeed. Was it a compliment, do you think?" "Yes, that is what it was. They are very rare, the reptiles; very few left, now-a-days." "Is that so? What is a reptile?" "It is a plantigrade circumflex vertebrate bacterium that hasn't any wings and is uncertain." "Well, it it sounds fine, it surely does." "And it IS fine.
The whole mystery was cleared up, we had been following in the trail of this animal. "I now remembered that the porcupine was one of the plantigrade family, with five toes on his hind feet, and only four on the fore ones. The tracks were undoubtedly his.
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