Animal Life and Intelligence. 



7. They feel — " at least some of them do." 



8. They are made of "flesh and blood." 



9. They grow old and die. 



10. They reproduce their kind. The cat may have 

 kittens. 



11. They are living organisms, but " not vegetables." 

 Now, let us look carefully at these characteristics, all 



of which were contained in the five answers, and were 

 probably familiar in some such form as this to all the 

 boys, and see if we cannot make them more general and 

 more accurate. 



1. An animal has a definite form. My school-boy friend 

 described it as a head and tail, four legs, and a body. But 

 it is clear that this description applies only to a very limited 

 number of animals. It will not apply to the butterfly, with 

 its great wings and six legs ; nor to the lobster, with its 

 eight legs and large pincer-claws ; to the limbless snake 

 and worm, the finned fish, the thousand-legs, the oyster 

 or the snail, the star-fish or the sea-anemone. The 

 animals to which my young friend's description applies 

 form, indeed, but a numerically insignificant proportion 

 of the multitudes which throng the waters and the air, 

 and not by any means a large proportion of those that 

 walk upon the surface of the earth. The description 

 applies only to the backboned vertebrates, and not to 

 nearly all of them. 



It is impossible to summarize in a sentence the form- 

 characteristics of animals. The diversities of form are 

 endless. Perhaps the distinguishing feature is the pre- 

 valence of curved and rounded contours, which are in 

 striking contrast to the definite crystalline forms of the 

 inorganic kingdom, characterized as these are by plane 

 surfaces and solid angles. We may say, however, that all 

 but the very lowliest animals have each and all a proper 

 and characteristic form of their own, which they have in- 

 herited from their immediate ancestors, and which they 

 hand on to their descendants. But this form does not 

 remain constant throughout life. Sometimes the change 



