Animal creation

“ But there is no recorded or known instance in which there has been produced under domestication an animal which can be said to be of a different species from its immediate known progenitors, or one that differed from its remote known progenitors in any but minor and adventitious peculiarities of structure. ”

“ The discovery of the true nature of the food of this species is particularly desirable, and may enable us to have the animal brought alive to this country, a thing which we believe has not been attempted ”

“ They constitute the aye-enduring tissue on which the ever-changing patterns of creation are inscribed: the patterns are ever varying; the tissue which exhibits them for ever remains the same. In the animal kingdom, for instance, the prominent ideas have always been uniform. However much the faunas of the various geologic periods may have differed from each other, or from the fauna which now exists, in their general aspect and character, they were all, if I may so speak, equally underlaid by the great leading ideas which still constitute the master types of animal life. ”

“ In entering upon the subject of Curiosities respecting Animals, we shall first introduce to the reader some interesting observations respecting the generation, formation, preservation, destruction, and reproduction, of animals in general; and, first, of animal generation.
Animal generation holds the first place among all that raise our admiration when we consider the Works of the Creator, and chiefly that appointment by which he has regulated the propagation, which is wisely adapted to the disposition and mode of life of every different species of animals, that people earth, air, or sea. ”

“ In all works on Natural History, we constantly find details of the marvellous adaptation of animals to their food, their habits, and the localities in which they are found. But naturalists are now beginning to look beyond this, and to see that there must be some other principle regulating the infinitely varied forms of animal life. ”

“ What goes on then in the animal kingdom is this—the bird-life seizes upon the bird-germ and builds it up into a bird, the image of itself. The reptile-life seizes upon another germinal speck, assimilates surrounding matter, and fashions it into a reptile. ”

“ I might speak of the use of animals to man for food, for clothing, to bear his burdens, to delight him with their beauty and affection animal. He has animal instincts, desires, passions, tastes, habits, powers, in a word, an animal nature. He possesses not merely the special faculties of one animal. The qualities of all animals are embodied in him. Plants and animals are special forms and qualities of life, all of which are combined in every human being. ”

“ Within the animal world, the preying of one form upon another is the main source of that great struggle for existence which has characterized the whole known history of life, and has been one of the influential factors in shaping the evolution of life and in modifying the special aspects assumed by the floras and faunas of each period. ”

“ Lest the migration of creatures should cease to be a thing of wonder to us, Nature organizes once in a way a monster excursion, sometimes of rats, sometimes of deer, but most frequently of birds, to remind man of the marvellous instinct that draws the animal world from place to place or from zone to zone. ”

“ Let me call your attention to those vertebrate animals which are most familiar to you, such as mammals, birds, and reptiles. At the present day, these groups of animals are perfectly well-defined from one another. We know of no animal now living which, in any sense, is intermediate between the mammal and the bird, or between the bird and the reptile ”

“ The action of means, exterior conditions, can modify the form and the functions of living beings; this is a fact of which the domestication of animals offers the most striking examples. But does it follow that because we can modify certain animal and vegetable species, we can therefore create their species? Can we imagine the possibility of modifications so active and powerful that they arrive at the most complex creations, at the construction of the great organs of animal life, and of those organs of the senses, so diverse and so marvellously adapted to their functions? ”

“ All the great classes of animals, beasts of the field, fowls of the air, creeping things, and things which dwell in the waters, flourished upon the globe long ages before the chalk was deposited. Very few, however, if any, of these ancient forms of animal life were identical with those which now live. Certainly not one of the higher animals was of the same species as any of those now in existence. ”

“ We have now arrived at the highest rank in the scale of animal life—the four-footed, hair-clad, milk-nursed denizens of our woods and fields—the subclass Mammalia, mammals.
These are the "animals" of popular speech, but accuracy requires a more distinctive expression, for every living thing not a plant is an "animal." ”

“ The fishes, frogs, reptiles, birds, and non-human mammals are human in having two body cavities, segmented internal skeletons, two pairs of limbs, skulls and spinal columns, red blood, brains, and dorsal cords; and in possessing two eyes, two ears, nostrils, and mouth opening out of the head. And finally all animals, including man, are related to all other animal forms by the great underlying facts of their origin, structure, composition, and destiny. All creatures, whether they live in the sea, in the heavens, or in subterranean glooms; whether they swim, fly, crawl, or walk ”

“ A Creator who put needless or inconvenient fish structures into the anatomy of a land animal and made the whole fauna and flora of the land a patch-up of aquatic forms of life must be not so much a Divinity as a Pedant. But it is the burthen of the whole beautiful science of comparative anatomy that the structure of animals and plants, and their succession in time, fall exactly into the conditions defined by the Theory of Natural Selection. ”

“ According to Darwin, the present host of animal life began from a few elemental forms, which developed, and by natural selection propagated certain types of animals, while others less suited to the battle of life died out. ”

“ Each creature consists of four representative forms of animal life combined in one, viz. that of the lion, the ox, the eagle, and man, together producing a strange, anomalous figure which is generally thought to personify wild animals, domestic animals, birds, and man, as possessing a common physical life, or created life in its entirety represented by its higher and more notable forms. ”

“ How far have we at present accounted for the varied animal colouration which we see around us? the glory of our cabinetdrawers, the mysterious wonder in the galleries of our museums, the charm of travellers abroad, and appreciative lovers of nature at home. Very much, when the difficulty of the problem is considered, and especially where the utility of animal disguises and mimicking appearances has been unravelled by the magic wand of "natural selection," or "the survival of the fittest." ”

“ Any favourable variety of a domestic animal is utterly useless to itself; while any increase of the powers and faculties of wild animals is immediately available, creating, as it were, a new and superior animal. ”

“ Or you might, very probably, have come to rebirth lower down in the scale of creation—as a beetle to be crushed under foot, a dog to be pinned out on the vivisector's table, a lamb to be flayed at the abattoir, a worm to writhe on the fisherman's hook, a formless grub to bloat itself with carrion. ”

“ The definition, however, on which he proceeds is scarcely correct, or at least sufficiently distinctive:—"An animal is an animated body, endowed with sense and spontaneous motion, or rather with the faculty of feeling and moving, although it may not change place." In treating of the generation of the lower species, he discusses the subject of spontaneous or equivocal origin, the idea of which he refutes, and endeavours to prove that all animals were created at one time. ”

“ To trace out the progressive development of animal life, from its humblest phases; and to mark, as they become visible in the intermediate grades, the first rudiments of organs and instincts which are destined to attain their maximum in the higher ones, embody but a small portion of what it is the naturalist's mission to investigate. ”

“ Accordingly, zoologists have so arranged the animal kingdom that warm-blooded animals, including man, the birds, and the quadrupeds, are classified together; while the cold-blooded animals, such as the fish, tortoise, frog, and all that have no vertebral column, are classed by themselves. ”

“ To give an imaginary example, from changes in progress on an island, let the organization{234} of a canine animal become slightly plastic, which animal preyed chiefly on rabbits, but sometimes on hares ”

“ Seeking, then, for the features likely to distinguish the most highly developed animal, we may safely say that they will appear in that animal exposed to the most complex conditions, adapted to the greatest variety of food, possessed of the most fully specialized organs, capable of using its innate forces to the best advantage, and commencing its individual existence with the best start in life. ”

“ To understand thoroughly an animal we must study its habits in its native haunts. To know its structure and position in the animal kingdom we must carefully dissect a large number of specimens, and study the development of the individual from its beginning. ”

“ The growth of animal life is equally instructive. First invertebrate life, then the lowest forms of vertebrate life. The fishes are followed by amphibians—then reptiles, then birds. The first mammal to appear was the lowest organized of all—the marsupials. And we have seen the sudden increase of mammalian life in Tertiary times. We notice, in all the divisions of life, a beginning, a culmination, and a decline. ”

“ The Animal Kingdom consists of sentient beings, that enliven the external parts of the earth. They possess the powers of voluntary motion, respire air, and are forced into action by the cravings of hunger or the parching of thirst, by the instincts of animal passion, or by pain. Like the vegetable kingdom, they are limited within the boundaries of certain countries by the conditions of climate and soil; and some of the species prey upon each other. Linnaeus has divided them into six classes;—Mammalia, Birds, Fishes, Amphibious Animals, Insects, and Worms. ”

“ But, nevertheless, the relationships of man and his animal associates (slaves, domestic animals, rats, mice, parasites, etc.) form as truly an animal association as do those of the animals which live associated in some forest glade; and in all probability, before any approximately complete understanding can be had of the human associations, their roots and principles of activity must be known and understood in the less aristocratic portion of his animal relatives. ”

“ From the abundant records and traditions dealing with the curious belief that certain men and women can transform themselves into animals I have collected a number of instances and examples which throw fresh light on the subject both from the point of view of folk-lore and occultism. The causes of transformation are various: contact with a wer-animal, touching what he has touched, wearing an animal skin, rubbing the body with ointment, slipping on a girdle, buckling on a strap, and many other expedients, magical and otherwise, may bring about the metamorphosis. ”

“ But, while fighting, the stags are doing Nature's work for the evolution of the race, no Nature protects them until the work is finished.
The answers to all the other questions are equally simple, and each links up the red deer to some principle of evolution which explains many other questions about other creatures; and by studying these, you learn to understand all Nature, including your own. ”

“ We enter the animal kingdom and find the attractive power binding together single elements as in the mineral, plus the cellular admixture as in the vegetable, plus the phenomena of feelings or susceptibilities. We observe that the animals are susceptible to certain affiliation and fellowship, and that they exercise natural selection. This elemental attraction, this admixture and selective affinity is love manifest in the degree of the animal kingdom. ”

“ And it is surely worthy of remark, that while in both the sacred and geologic records a strongly defined line separates between the period of plants and the succeeding periods of reptiles, and again between the period of reptiles and the succeeding period of mammals, no line in either record separates between this period of mammals and the human period. Man came into being as the lastborn of creation, just ere the close of that sixth day—the third and terminal period of organic creation—to which the great mammals belong. ”

“ The same step-ladder which is exhibited by the whole animal kingdom, the steps of which are the different races and classes, with at the one extreme the [pg 132] lowliest animals and at the other the highest, is exhibited also by every higher animal in its development, since from the moment of its origin until it has reached its full development it passes through—both as regards internal and external organisation—the essentials of all the forms which become permanent for a lifetime in the animals lower than itself. ”

“ The differences which separate the mammals, birds, reptiles, and fishes from each other, though vast, yet seem of the same nature as those which distinguish a mouse from an elephant or a swallow from a goose. ”

“ Through thousands of rebirths in each animal form it is promoted into higher and higher animal forms, in which more and more passages of its composing principles are opened. The last forms of lower animals it takes are those of monkeys and apes, the forms just before developing into human form. ”