Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1861 edition. Excerpt: ...and exercised even in early youth, and independently of instruction. The child classifies as if by intuition objects which seem to it to possess some one quality in common. The principle is indispensable to the acquirement of knowledge; and in adopting what at first sight appears to be a system of artificial classification, the philosophic naturalist is merely giving effect to the tendency of the human mind as manifested even in childhood. The application of scientific terms not only to the classes and orders into which living beings are subdivided, but even to the individual animals themselves, is certainly a considerable difficulty in the way of those unacquainted with the ancient languages from which those terms are taken. Such terms, however, are extremely convenient, and may perhaps be said to be indispensable to a system of classification. We are now to suppose the reader to enter on the study of some of the animated beings of which the sea-shore furnishes specimens, and although they present themselves to him in a miscellaneous manner, he will find it highly conducive to his purpose to study them in somewhat of the order in which they are placed by naturalists The scientific phraseology need not occasion any alarm. It may be to some extent laid aside, and can always be explained. Thus our reader may be presumed to classify all the living forms that come under his notice in one or other of the four great groups into which the illustrious Cuvier and others who have followed him have divided the whole animal kingdom. CLASSIFICATION. 187 The First of these four groups comprehends all animals that have backbones or vertebrae, and which are hence called the Vertebrata. The Second group comprehends all those animals which have soft...
