THE FOOD OF THE OTHER LAND ANIMALS QQ 



All animal life is based upon plant life, for only plants can 

 convert inorganic into organic substance. Insects and their 

 allies represent the major part of animal life on land; they 

 feed on all parts of plants, and on every sort of plant, and are 

 the main support of the other animals which do not feed on 

 plants. The vertebrates form the next most important group, 

 and of these certain t>'pes of mammals are the chief plant 

 feeders. The molluscs and the earth-worms are of some im- 

 portance in the picture as a whole, while the other animal 

 groups are all but negligible. 



The vertebrates which are not plant feeders eat other verte- 

 brates and insects, a few the snails and worms. The insects 

 which are not plant feeders eat other insects and vast numbers 

 of them, horse-flies, tsetse flies, stable-flies, mosquitoes, some 

 midges, buffalo-flies, deer-flies, black-flies, sand-flies, and other 

 blood-sucking flies, fleas and jiggers, hot, warble, and other 

 parasitic flies, bugs, biting and sucking lice, horn moths and 

 other moths, mites, ticks, and various other forms, subsist 

 whoHy or in part upon the vertebrates. 



And within the bodies of all insects, vertebrates and other 

 creatures live hordes of other parasites both animals and plants 

 from which no living thing is ever wholly free. 



