PREFACE. vii 



that author's latest work, "La Yie et les Moeurs des Animaux." 

 Other chapters, such as " Life in the Ocean," the chapter on Crusta- 

 ceans, and some others, are compiled from various sources ; they will 

 not be found in either of M. Figuier's volumes ; but in other respects 

 his text has been pretty closely followed. 



M. Figuier's plan is to begin the study of animals with the less 

 perfect beings occupying the lower rounds of the Zoological ladder, his 

 reason for doing so being an impression that the presence of the 

 gradually perfecting animal structure, from the simplest organisms up 

 to the more perfect forms, was specially calculated to attract the 

 reader. " What can be more curious or more interesting to the mind," 

 ne asks, "than to examine the successive links in the uninterrupted 

 chain of living beings which commence with the Infusoria and ter- 

 minate in Man ?" 



The work, he hopes, is not without the impress of a true cha- 

 racter of novelty and originality ; at least he knows no work in which 

 the strange habits and special interests of the Zoophytes and Molluscs 

 can be studied, nor any work in which an attempt is made to represent 

 them by means of designs at once scientifically correct and attractive 

 from the picturesque character of the illustrations, most of which 

 have been made from specimens selected by Monsieur Ch. Bevalet 

 from the various museums in Paris. 



One of those charming plain-speaking children we sometimes meet 

 with lately said to M. Figuier, " They tell me thou art a vulgariser of 

 Science. What is that ?" 



He took the child in his arms, and carried it to the window, where 

 there was a beautiful rose-tree in blossom, and invited it to pull a rose. 

 The child gathered the perfumed flower, not without pricking itself 

 cruelly with the spines ; then, with its little hands still bleeding, it 

 went to distribute roses to others in the room. 



" Thou art now a vulgariser," said he to the child ; " for thou takest 

 to thyself the thorns, and givest the flowers to others P 



The parallel, although exaggerated, is not without its basis of truth, 

 and was probably suggested by the criticism some of his works have 



