St. George Jackson Mivart
Published: 2015-06-05
Total Pages: 0
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Excerpt from The Cat: An Introduction to the Study of Backboned Animals, Especially Mammals Biology is the science which treats of all living organisms, from Man to the lowest plant. No natural science is at present more keenly pursued or with more effect. The advances of Astronomy and Geology have produced great changes in men's minds during the last three centuries: Biology is producing changes at least as great, in the present age. So rapid has been its progress that the Natural History of Animals and Plants needs to be rewritten the field of Nature being surveyed from a new stand-point. Such a history may be written in two ways: (1) Living beings may be treated as one whole, their various powers and the more general facts as to their organization being successively portrayed as they exist in the whole series; or (2) one animal (or plant) may be selected as a type and treated of in detail, other types, successively more divergent in structure from the first, being described afterwards. In following the latter mode, we may either begin with one of the most simply organised of living creatures and gradually ascend to the highest and most complex in structure; or we may commence with the latter, and thence descend to the consideration of the lowest kinds of animated beings. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.