INTRODUCTION TO ZOOLOGY 



FOR THE 



USE OF SCHOOLS. 



PART II. 



YERTEBRATE ANIMALS. 



-" Earth in her rich attire, 



Consummate, lovely, smiled ; air, water, earth, 



By fowl, fish, beast, was flown, was swum, was walk'd." 



Milton's Paradise Lost. 



We have had our attention directed to the three groups of 

 animals termed " Invertebrate," from the absence of the 

 vertebral * column ; and we are now prepared to enter upon 

 the examination of the more highly organized beings which 

 constitute the fourth gi-eat division of the animal kingdom. 

 These have a more complex structure and a higher intelli- 

 gence ; many of them by their great strength and vast propor- 

 tions must excite our amazement ; and in this class, after 

 passing many inferior grades, we reach to man himself, " the 

 paragon of animals." 



The most obvious character by which the Vertebrate Ani- 

 mals are distinguished from the lower tribes is, as the name 

 denotes, the possession of a skull and back-bone ; or rather 

 by their " having the brain and princii)al trunk of the nervous 

 system included in a bony articulated case, composing the 

 skull and vertebral column." t There are other important 



* " Vertebral, as ccmsisting of segments of the skeleton, which turn one 

 upon the other, and as being the centre on which the whole body can bend 

 and rotate ; from the Latin verto, veiiere, to turn." — Projcssor Owen's Ja.c- 

 tures on the Vertebrate Animals. 



t Manual of British Vertebrate Animals. By the Rev. Leonard Jenyns, 

 M.A. 



O 



