THE 



UTILIZATION OF MINUTE LIFE. 



INTRODUCTION. 



EE lower classes of animals which are treated 

 of in the following pages are mostly as re- 

 markable for their great utility to man, as by 

 the peculiarity of their organizations or their 

 habits. Many of them have acquired as 

 great an importance in the economic applications 

 of the human race as the higher organized beings 

 that have contributed to the welfare and comfort of 

 man from the earliest historic periods, and which 

 have generally been termed " domestic animals." 



Such a term might, at the present day, be 

 applied to most of those lower forms of animal life 

 which will occupy our attention here. 



By domestication is understood the art of 

 training animals to administer to the wants of 

 man. It is by flattering their natural tastes, by 

 placing them artificially in circumstances similar in 

 many respects to those of the savage state, preserv- 



