Zoölogy: The Science of Animal Life Popular Science Library, Volume XII (of 16), P. F. Collier & Son Company, 1922

Snakes (Ophidia) are the newest and most flourishing branch on the reptilian family tree, whose trunk and lower limbs are dead or dying. They differ from lizards mainly in their...

What is a reptile? It is a cold-blooded, air-breathing vertebrate, with one occipital condyle, complete right and left aortic arches, red blood and a covering of scales. The cla...

The generally accepted classification of the insects divides them into more than twenty orders, and these into hundreds of families whose species, already catalogued, are three...

"One of the most striking and significant results of the study of the later Mesozoic and earliest Tertiary mammalian faunas," remarks Prof. W. B. Scott, "is that the higher or p...

The phylum Arthropoda embraces an immense assemblage of small animals, inhabiting salt and fresh waters, the land, and the air above it. The typical members of this group have a...

The familiar marine mussels of the family Mytilidæ will some day become of great importance in this country as a food supply, as now they are useful in resisting encroachment by...

These are the "animals" of popular speech, but accuracy requires a more distinctive expression, for every living thing not a plant is an "animal." Unfortunately no such distinct...

The lower orders of teleosts retain many characteristics of the Holostei, and several of their families are known only as fossils in the Cretaceous and Tertiary rocks. The most...

The great order Rodentia--rats, mice, rabbits, porcupines, squirrels, beavers, etc., derives its name from the Latin verb _rodere_, to gnaw, or eat away (something), and is char...

We have now arrived at the highest division of the Mammalia, the order Primates, a term here signifying "first" in rank of importance by reason of the possession of a structure...

In the cats (family Felidæ) we come to the most recent and advanced development of the carnivorous type, by straight descent from the Eocene Miacidæ. Their cardinal characterist...

In beginning, with the fishes, an account of the typical vertebrates, it will be well to point out the structural features in which all agree. Vertebrates are bilaterally symmet...

Seaweeds and rocks at and below the limit of the ebbing tide are often covered with small bushy growths, or with lacelike incrustations that are alive. These are moss animals, r...

The type and simplest form of that great division of aquatic, and almost exclusively marine, animals constituting the phylum Coelenterata, is the polyp. It consists of a soft-sk...

The great tribe of animals called Ungulata ("hoofed") or Herbivora (eaters of herbage--herbivores), combines two types of structure into which they have diverged since their ori...

The birds constitute a class in the phylum Chordata, and otherwise are combined, in the group Sauropsida, with the Reptilia, with which they agree more closely in anatomy than w...

From these relics of geologic antiquity the remainder of the birds now living, and their fossil ancestors as well, differ fundamentally, and are united in a division whose badge...

No results of investigation in natural history have been more amazing than those that show the marvelous richness of the sea in plant and animal life--not merely at its warm mar...

This is a rather miscellaneous group introducing the typical Herbivora. The most ancient of them in the style of their structure are certain little spotted creatures, like minia...

The fact that likeness of structure, which compels naturalists to group certain animals into a family in spite of possible unlikeness in size or form, is accompanied by resembla...

The frogs and toads of the order Anura differ from the inferior batrachians principally in form. The tail is absent, and instead of long, slender bodies and small legs, or none,...

Ever since man began to think in the connected way that follows self-consciousness, he has pondered, with a mixture of fear, reverence, and curiosity, on the nature of life and...

We have now come to a class of vertebrates that in their manner of life, and presumably in their history, connect the dwellers in the waters with those on the lands of the globe...

The mollusks, or "shellfish" (phylum Mollusca) are a homogeneous group of soft-bodied, unsegmented, typically bilateral, elaborately organized animals, mainly aquatic and marine...

Only a rapid systematic sketch of the class Pisces, fishes, is possible, distinguishing the main divisions, alluding to their history, and touching here and there the most chara...

I mentioned in my introductory chapter that the simplest form of animal was one whose whole being was contained within a single envelope, or "skin," called a cell. Such a cell c...

We have been considering up to this point one of the two primary and natural divisions of the animal kingdom--that into Invertebrates and Vertebrates. Although these are terms m...

Our scientific arrangement introduces next the gull family, followed by a series of groups that seems to the layman most miscellaneous. The gulls are a world-wide family of sea...

The so-called "birds of prey" include three quite distinct groups, the American "vultures," the hawk and eagle tribe, and the fish hawks. All agree in having strong, hook-pointe...

Next in advance of the Insectivora stands the order Chiroptera ("hand-wing"), which is the tribe of bats, divisible into two suborders--the large, diurnal fruit bats, and the sm...

In this volume, occupying the place in the series assigned to the subject "Zoölogy," the writer was called upon to survey the whole range of animal life on the globe, and to kee...

Whale is a general name for the extensive and varied order of marine mammals termed in science Cetacea. Their origin is obscure, but it is certain that their very ancient ancest...

Again we have to deal with the scattered and feeble relics of a once important race; but that was long ago, even as geologists use the word long, for the order of insectivores (...

At the foot of the arrangement of phyla in the metazoa stand the Porifera, or sponges, fixed, plantlike, queerly shaped beings living in the sea, except one family in fresh wate...

The rays (order Raiæ) differ from the sharks superficially rather than in structure, where the most important difference is the position of the gill clefts, which are lateral in...

We come now to the fishes proper--those with skeletons of bone, although in some of the lower forms the ossification is incomplete. The mouth contains supplementary tooth-bearin...

We have now run through the list of all the orders of birds except the last and largest--the "passerine" birds, the ordinary songsters of the fields and woodlands of the norther...

The phylum Platyhelminthes follows the coelenterates in the ascending series of zoölogical classification, and includes a baneful company of creatures badly called "worms," whic...