Animals Before Man 



semblages of animals mentioned are each char- 

 acterized by some common peculiarity of the 

 plan on which they are built ; and if he doubts 

 this he has only to refer to some good work on 

 zoology. And if the name of a division of ani- 

 mals can be associated in the mind with the 

 form of some one of its more familiar members, 

 we can understand very well what is meant 

 when the group is referred to. 



Animals are, according to their degree of 

 relationship, placed in larger or smaller assem- 

 blages, the principal of which, in the order of 

 their size being known, beginning with the 

 largest, as Classes, Orders, Families, and Genera. 

 Letting books as a whole stand for the sub- 

 kingdom Vertebrata, the classes may be said to 

 roughly correspond to books of a given kind — 

 histories for example — and the orders to those 

 relating to the history of one country, while 

 the families would be represented by histories 

 of a given section of that country. As for 

 genera, we will look upon them as books tell- 

 ing, as they often do, the story of a single 

 town, or some particular event, and the species 



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