A manual of elementary zoology / by L.A. Borrodaile.

  • Lancelot Alexander Borradaile
Date:
1945
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: A manual of elementary zoology / by L.A. Borrodaile. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    21/840 page 1
    A MANUAL OF ELEMENTARY ZOOLOGY CHAPTER I INTRODUCTORY: THE ANIMAL ORGANISM Biology. Zoology, the science of animals, is a branch of Biology, the science of living beings. Of such beings there are various kinds besides the animals ; but all the kinds have important features in common. Rightly to understand any animal is therefore to com- prehend properties which it shares with non-animal living beings as well as its purely animal characters. Thus at the outset of our study of Zoology it is desirable that we should spend a little time in considering the nature in general of living beings. Out of the multitude of material objects that surround us, we distinguish some, as alive, from the rest, “uf8iiess.”nd which are lifeless—that is, are dead or have never been alive. The question before us is, first, what this distinction rests upon : What is the property of living things which causes us to contrast them with other objects ? On this will follow a second question : WTat further characteristics are common to all living beings ? The first question is not difficult to answer. We say that objects are alive when we observe that they take action -that they “ do things ”■— and further that the things which each of them does are such as should be beneficial to it and to its own kind. A Life
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