Stories of the Universe: Animal Life

We have spoken of the Notochord as a structure which precedes the formation of the spinal column in Vertebrates. This needs a little more definite explanation. We all know that...

We all know what it is to adapt ourselves to circumstances. Suppose two lads, fresh from school, go out into the world to earn their living; one becomes a navvy and one a clerk....

It is one of the most well-worn of commonplace sayings, that "one half the world does not know how the other half lives." It is equally true that one half the world does not kno...

Give a child a few handfuls of shells. Probably the first thing he will do with them is to sort out the various kinds and separate them from one another. Each will go into a lit...

If we are to accept the opinion of Dr. Isaac Watts, man, as a moral being, is distinctly inferior to the "birds in their little nests," who live in harmony with one another; and...

The above is a very descriptive name for a division which includes the Crabs and Lobsters and the Insects. Formerly they were included, along with the worms, under the name Annu...

it spends most of its time in a dry state, and is fast on its way to become a land-shell. At most of the familiar English seaside resorts one may see dozens of it baking in a ho...

Everybody knows the Star-fish and many people know the Sea-Urchin. An "urchin" is not a name for a naughty little boy, but the French (_oursin_) for a hedgehog. A Sea-Urchin is...

Next after the animals that consist of one cell only we have to consider the group of animals among which the lower kinds, at any rate, consist of a number of cells arranged in...

The shell-fish are called Mollusca, the soft-bodied animals. It will easily be seen that this name was intended to point out the distinction between them and the Arthropoda, as...

This assemblage would have been more correctly styled if instead of "Vermes" it had been described as "animals unsorted." Subsequent zoologists have by degrees picked out and se...

Some idea of the general characteristics of the Protozoa has already been given by the description of _Amoeba_. We may now say something about special groups of the Protozoa, wh...

Many who are familiar with the domestic sponge have never seen a sponge in a growing state, and would find it almost impossible to realise that a sponge may be a thing of beauty...

If the microscope had never been invented, the Story of Animal Life, as it is related by modern science, could never have been told. It is to the microscope that we owe our know...

The older zoologists used to speak of Vertebrata and Invertebrata as animals with a back-bone and animals without one, and everyone thought it a very natural way of dividing up...

We have already described the creatures which are popularly known as Corallines. Modern zoologists have long separated off from the Corallines of the older writers, a group of a...

These were at one time included under the Mollusca, on account of their possession of a bivalve shell. This shell, however, is placed practically back and front of the animal, n...