The study of animal life / by J. Arthur Thomson.

Date:
1892
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The study of animal life / by J. Arthur Thomson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    Another natural way of beginning is to work out some subject which attracts you. It becomes a centre round which a crystal grows. Muybridge’s photographic demonstrations of animal loco- motion have interested us in the flight of birds, let us follow this up by observation and by reading, e.g., Ruskin’s Love's Meinie (1881); Pettigrew’s Animal Locomotion (Internat. Sci. Series, 1873); Marey’s Animal Mechanism (Internat. Sci. Series, 1874); Marey’s Le Vol des Oiseanx (Paris, 1890). The colours of animals appeal to many people. Read E. B. Poulton’s volume (1890) in the Internat. Sci. Series, and Grant Allen’s Colour Sense, and F. E. Beddard’s Animal Colouration (Lond., 1892). The relations between plants and animals are entrancingly interesting. Watch the bees and other insects in their flight, and read Darwin’s volumes on the Fertilisation of Orchids (1862) and on Cross-Fertilisation (1876); Hermann Muller’s Fertilisation of Flowers (transl. by Prof. D’Arcy Thompson, Lond., 1883); Kerner’s Flowers and their Unbidden Guests; the articles on “ Insectivorous Plants,” in Encyclop. Britannica, and in Chambers’s Encyclop., or Darwin’s work (1875). Again, many of us are directly interested in foreign countries. Let the practical interest broaden, it naturally becomes geographical and physiographical, and extends to the natural history of the region. No more pleasant and sane way of learning about the ways and distribution of animals could be suggested than that which follows as a gradual extension of physiographical knowledge. See Dr. H. R. Mill’s Realm of Nature, and the following samples from the long list of books by exploring naturalists :— A. Agassiz, Three Cruises of the Blake” (Boston and New York, 1888). S. W. Baker, Wild Beasts and Ways: Reminiscences of Europe, Asia, Africa, and America (London, 1890). H. W. Bates, Naturalist on the Amazons (5th ed., London, 1884). T. Belt, Naturalist in Nicaragua (2nd ed., London, 1888). W. T. Blanford, Observations on Geology and Zoology of Abyssinia (Lond., 1870). P. B. Du Chaillu, Exploratiotis and Adventures in Equatorial Africa, (Lond., 1861); Ashango Land (1867). R. O. Cunningham, Notes on the Natural History of the Straits of Magellan (Edin., 1871). Darwin, Voyage of the “Beagle ” (1844, new ed. 1890). H. Drummond, Tropical Africa (Lond., 1888). H. O. Forbes, A Naturalist's Wanderings in the Eastern Archi- pelago (Lond., 1885). Guillemard, Cruise of the Marchesa (Lond., 1886).