IV. THE CLASSIFICATION OF ANIMALS 



In most libraries, the books are arranged on the shelves 

 in a certain order. One class of books occupies a certain 

 shelf or shelves, and another class, other shelves. Or, as 

 we say, they are classified and arranged. For example, 

 aU books of history are put into a group by themselves, 

 books of fiction into a group by themselves, books of biog- 

 raphy by themselves, and so on through the list. 



Now in much the same way animals are gathered together 

 in groups. Certain ones much ahke are put into one group, 

 certain others much ahke but differing from those in the 

 first group are put into another group, and so on through 

 the whole animal kingdom. Like the books in the librar}?^, 

 animals are arranged in groups for convenience of study. 

 More than this, however, animals are gathered into groups 

 that we may get a better imderstanding of their relation- 

 ships to each other. In our study of animals we shaU find 

 that a relationship,^ or kinship, exists throughout the 

 animal kingdom from the amceba to man. Each animal 

 bears a certain relation to the remaining members of the 

 kingdom, although this relation is much closer with some 

 animals than it is with others. The object of zoological 

 classification is to express the relation of one animal to 

 the others in the kingdom and to determine what place it 

 occupies in the great assemblage of animals. The classi- 



• By this we do not mean that the members of the animal kingdom 

 form a serial arrangement, but rather such an arrangement as is 

 shown by the diagram in Figure 9. 



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