MAIL-CLAD ANIMALS. 3 



armour we must, however, always recollect that the 

 animal has this inestimable advantage over man, that 

 his armour is grown upon his own body, and is in fact 

 part and parcel of himself, instead of having to be put 

 on and off. Again, whereas the chief types of human 

 armour may be summarised under the three forms of 

 chain- scale- and plate-armour, we find a much greater 

 variety prevailing in the coats-of-mail of animals. 

 And here we would impress upon the reader how 

 much knowledge he would gain of these wonderful, 

 and frequently very beautiful, structures if he were to 

 visit the Natural History Museum at South Kensing- 

 ton, and inspect the admirable collection of different 

 types of these and other marvellous animal structures 

 arranged in the cases placed in the bays on the left 

 side of the great central hall. 



Our brief survey of some of the more important 

 types of animal armour will be best understood if we 

 take the various groups in their natural sequence of 

 rank and their succession in geological time, com- 

 mencing with the lower and earlier forms. Our first 

 glance will then be directed towards the great class 

 of fishes, of which some of the earliest examples 

 occur in the Old Eed Sandstone rocks of Scotland, 

 laid down in, lakes and rivers ages before those forests 

 flourished, the wood and foliage of which we now burn 

 in our fires as coal. Strange and uncouth indeed 

 must have been many of these old fishes, whose bodies 

 were encased in a complete coat of plate-armour un- 

 like that found in any living forms, and consisting 



