Animals Before Man 



themselves or were not smft enough to run 

 away were eaten. 



Living about the coral reefs of tropical 

 waters are a number of odd-looking little fishes 

 23opularly and aptly named box-fishes, because 

 they are shut up in a box of bone through 

 which their fins and tails protrude just enough 

 to let them swim. These strongly suggest in 

 their appearance some of the early fishes, but 

 the similarity is in appearance only, for there 

 is not the slightest relationship between them 

 — nature has merely repeated in some measure 

 an old design. And in the rivers of South 

 America are many strange little catfishes as 

 completely clad in plate armor as were any 

 fishes of the past, and for the same reason — 

 to escape being eaten by other, swifter, bet- 

 ter armed fishes, and not because they are in 

 the least related to the mail-clad fishes of the 

 past.* 



* The reader will please bear in mind here and elsewhere 

 that protective and adaptive characters are not put on by any 

 conscious act of the animals mentioned, but that they have gradu- 

 ally developed during a long course of years. There is a great 

 temptation to write of protective resemblances as though they 



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