An essay on the study of the animal kingdom / [Robert Edmond Grant].

  • Grant, Robert E. (Robert Edmond), 1793-1874.
Date:
1829
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: An essay on the study of the animal kingdom / [Robert Edmond Grant]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    mense ; but as the greater part live in the most concealed situations in tropical deserts, in marshes, heaths, and rivers, and as many of them are armed with the most deadly poison; this class of animals has been a less favourite object of study, fewer of them are knowm, and they still present to the enterprising naturalist a rich field of inter¬ esting and important investigation. The species of Shell¬ fish or Testacea, Crustaceous Animals, Worms, Radiated Animals, and Zoophytes, which almost cover the bottom of the vast abyss, exceed all calculation. The forms of Animalcules vary in almost every infusion of vegetable or animal matter, which nature presents, or art can form. Nine hundred species of intestinal Worms have already been extracted from the bodies of animals, although com¬ paratively little of the attention of naturalists has hitherto been directed to this extraordinary tribe of beings. The beautiful forms and colours of Insects, their interesting habits and economy, their extraordinary abundance and the facility of obtaining them, their singular metamorphoses, their importance to mankind and in the economy of nature, have long rendered this class a more popular and attractive object of study, and a hundred thousand species of these animals are now known to naturalists, a number which ex¬ ceeds that of the Vegetable and Mineral Kingdoms taken together. The number of individuals belonging to the Animal Kingdom, is not less remarkable than the varieties of their form ; notwithstanding the many obstacles to their increase, from the constant warfare between the different species, from disease, accident, the changes of season, and the de¬ structive ravages of man. The weakness of herbivorous Quadrupeds, induces them to congregate for protection in large flocks, which cover extensive tracts of country, both in the Old and New World : as the deer, the sheep, the ox? the rabbit, the hare, the paca, and many others. The numbers are still greater in the class of Birds, where the vast flocks sometimes darken the heavens like an eclipse: