File:The study of animal life (1906) (14772059662).jpg

Identifier: studyofanimallif00thomuoft (find matches)
Title: The study of animal life
Year: 1906 (1900s)
Authors: Thomson, J. Arthur (John Arthur), 1861-1933
Subjects: Zoology
Publisher: New York : C. Scribner's sons
Contributing Library: Gerstein - University of Toronto
Digitizing Sponsor: MSN

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chievement. It is worth while tothink and dream over a birds-eye view of the animal king-dom—to secure representative specimens, to arrange themin a suitably shelved cupboard, so that the outlines of thepicture may become clear in the mind. The arrangementof animals on a genealogical or pedigree tree, whichHaeckel first suggested, may be readily abused, but it hasits value in presenting a vivid image of the organic unityof the animal kingdom. If the catalogue be thus realised, if the foliage come torepresent animals actually known, and if an attempt bemade to learn the exact nature, limits, and meaning of theseveral branches, the student has made one of the mostimportant steps in the study of animal life. Much willremain indeed—to connect the living twigs with those whoseleaves fell off ages ago, to understand the continual renewalof the foliage by the birth of new leaves, and finally tounderstand how the entire tree of life grew to be what it is. 12 The Study of Animal Life parti
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Fig. 2 —Genealogical TreeThe small branches in the centre indicate the classes of worms; theletters P, B, and S indicate the positions of Peripatus. Balanoglossus, andSphenodon or Hatteria respectively. CHAP. I The Wealth of Life 13 There is of course no doubt as to the fact that some formsof hfe are more complex than others. It requires no faithto allow that the firstlings or Protozoa are simpler thanall the rest; that sponges, which are more or less loosecolonies of unit masses imperfectly compacted together, arein that sense simpler than jellyfish, and so on. The animalsmost like ourselves are more intricate and more perfectlycontrolled organisms than those which are obviously moreremote, and associated with this perfecting of structure thereis an increasing fulness and freedom of life. We may arrange all the classes in series from low to high,from simple to complex, but this will express only our mostgeneralised conceptions. For within each class there isgreat variety, each has

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