n8 Human Physiology. 



CHAPTER IV, 



ANIMAL LIFE. 



Life in Animalculse Mollusca Wonders of Insect Life Insect Transfor- 

 mations Flies Bombardier Beetle Honey Bee Ants Fire Flies- 

 Spiders Fishes Snails The Rattlesnake: Birds, their Forms and 

 Plumage Butterflies Beetles Life in the Deep Sea. 



LIFE, as manifested in the animal kingdom, is full of evidences 

 of intelligence, adaptation, and design, of so varied, complex, 

 beautiful, and surprising a character as to keep the mind of the 

 naturalist in a perpetual admiration, and impress him more and 

 more with the idea that an infinite wisdom, an omnipotent 

 Mechanician and Artist, has willed and wrought. Let us, as 

 the best introduction we can have to the study of the anatomy 

 and physiology of man, glance at the structure and functions 

 of a few of the lower animals, with special regard to the work- 

 ing of the Creative Element, or what we call Life. 



I find it difficult to group facts as I would wish, because the 

 same animal or insect may combine in itself the most wonder- 

 ful beauty, adaptation, mechanism, and strange instinctive 

 faculties. I must leave, therefore, somewhat of the classifica- 

 tion of facts to the memory and intelligence of the reader. 

 What I wish to note specially, as bearing on the theory of 

 development, is, that we find complex and perfect mechanism, 

 wonderful beauty and perfection of apparatus, in the earliest, 

 and what we call the lowest forms of animal life. A naturalist 

 has said that he could spend his whole life in examining so 

 much of the earth's surface as he could cover with his hand. 

 I can therefore give but some hasty glances at the vast and 

 wonderful world of animal life around us. 



The myriads of animalculae which we can only examine with 



