PREFACE 



THE general plan of this text-book is at the same time 

 both old and new. Old, because it attempts to restore the 

 old-time instruction in Natural History ; new, because 

 "Natural History" is not to-day what it was a genera- 

 tion ago. The treatment will seem new also in contrast 

 with modern text-books of zoology, since they are devoted 

 primarily to comparative anatomy, a field upon which we 

 lay little stress. 



This departure is the outcome of a conviction that the 

 needs of the secondary student are not best met by a 

 course in comparative anatomy. That conviction is not 

 altered by the circumstance that anatomy is fundamental 

 for advanced work in zoology and physiology, for only a 

 sixth of the secondary students go to college, and proba- 

 bly less than four per cent of them continue their zoologi- 

 cal work there. The vast majority of secondary students, 

 then, are not to be zoologists, but rather men of affairs. 

 What the ordinary citizen needs is an acquaintance with 

 the common animals that may be the companions of his 

 country walks, and that may even stray into Wall Street, 

 Dearborn Street, or Commonwealth Avenue. He wants 

 to know where else over the world the common animals 

 of his State are to be found and, as a legislator or as a 

 taxpayer, he wants to know how animals affect man. It 

 is more important for him to know these matters than to 

 know the location of the pedal ganglion of the snail, or 



