INTRODUCTION TO ZOOLOGY, 



FOR THE 



USE OF SCHOOLS. 



PART II. 



-" 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 organised beings which 

 constitute the fourth great division of the animal kingdom. 

 These have a more complex structure and a higher intelligence; 

 many of them by their great strength and vast proportions 

 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 principal trunk of the nervous 

 system included in a bony articulated case, composing the 

 skull and vertebral column, "t There are other important 



* " Vertebral, as consisting 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, vertere, to turn." Professor 

 Owen's Lectures on the Vertebrate Animals. 



f Manual of British Vertebrate Animals. By the Rev. Leonard 

 Jenyns, M.A, 



