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    Divisions of the Animal Kingdom and Properties of External Form (Domesticated Animals of the British Islands)
    Divisions of the Animal Kingdom and Properties of External Form (Domesticated Animals of the British Islands)
    Divisions of the Animal Kingdom and Properties of External Form (Domesticated Animals of the British Islands)
    Ebook125 pages1 hour

    Divisions of the Animal Kingdom and Properties of External Form (Domesticated Animals of the British Islands)

    By David Low

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    About this ebook

    This fascinating essay by David Low explores in detail what divides members of the animal kingdom, as well as the concept of "external form". Low looks at history, geography, biology, and natural history in an adventurous attempt to better understand our animal counterparts. "Divisions of the Animal Kingdom and Properties of External Form" is highly recommended for those with an interest in animal biology, and it would make for a fantastic addition to collections of related literature. Many vintage books such as this are becoming increasingly scarce and expensive. We are republishing this volume now in a modern, high-quality edition complete with the original text and artwork.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHome Farm Books
    Release dateSep 29, 2017
    ISBN9781473343085
    Divisions of the Animal Kingdom and Properties of External Form (Domesticated Animals of the British Islands)

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      Divisions of the Animal Kingdom and Properties of External Form (Domesticated Animals of the British Islands) - David Low

      FORM.

      I.—DIVISIONS OF THE ANIMAL KINGDOM.

      ALL bodies may, with relation to their modes of existence, be divided into two great classes, the first comprehending those which consist of common matter, subject to the laws of chemical action; the second comprehending the bodies in which matter is further subject to those other laws to which matter endowed with life is subject. A stone, a metal, or a piece of earth, is common matter, subject to known chemical actions. A plant or an animal is likewise matter, subject to changes of place, or disposition of its constituent particles, by chemical forces. But, while the plant or the animal lives, it is under the influence of other powers, and has its form, actions, and relations, determined and controlled by a distinct system of laws. It is then a living body, and it is only when it ceases to live that it becomes wholly subject to the chemical laws of common matter.

      Of the laws which produce the condition to which we apply the term Life, we know nothing but from certain phenomena which the living body presents. The essential cause is amongst those ultimate truths which human reason cannot reach. No approach has been made to solve the mystery of Life; and at this hour we are as ignorant of the cause of life, and of the agency which connects the powers of mind and the mechanism of the body, as at the first dawning of human inquiry.

      Of living bodies there are two great divisions, the Vegetable and the Animal. In the vegetable there is life, but, so far as we know, there is no sensation, nor power of motion dependent upon the will. In the animal there is sensation, and the power of voluntary motion. An aphorism frequently quoted is, that plants grow and live; that animals grow, live, and feel. Life, then, pervades both kingdoms; but life, in the animal, performs other functions, and sensation is added to the powers merely vital.

      Besides that distinction between common matter, and matter under the influence of the vital principle, which is founded on the different powers and functions of bodies, there is another distinction, obvious to the senses, founded on the different structure and form of the bodies. Matter uninfluenced by the powers of life, presents itself in masses, or in regular forms termed crystalline. In living bodies, the particles constituting the organism do not arrange themselves in masses or crystals, but form fibres, sacs, tubes, or other parts, suited to particular functions. This structure is termed organization, and is proper to the living kingdom, vegetable and animal. Hence the further distinction exists between the mineral and living kingdoms of nature, of Organic and Inorganic.

      Inorganic matter has its substance increased by the addition of further particles. Organic matter is likewise increased by the addition of further parts, but then it adds to its own substance by the action of its proper organs. A mineral is increased in volume or weight by the simple addition of new parts: a plant, or an animal, deriving matter from other substances, converts it, by the action of its organs, into the various tissues which constitute its own substance. Organic bodies, therefore, only can be said to grow.

      As the particles of living bodies are determined and controlled in their actions and relations by peculiar forces, so living bodies resist changes, physical and chemical, which, in the dead state, would take place. The influence of heat, moisture, or other agents, which would subvert the union of the particles of a body when dead, can be resisted by the same body when it is endowed with life. Animals, when alive, have the power of resisting extremes of heat, which acting upon the dead body would dry up and dissipate its fluid parts, nay, reduce it to a cinder. Many persons have subjected themselves to a temperature of the air far exceeding that of boiling water, and yet the heat of the body itself has very little exceeded that of its natural state. A few years ago a French mountebank exhibited, night after night, to thousands of spectators, in London, his power of entering a heated oven, in which he remained while a piece of flesh was roasted. A coal-mine in Scotland, in the valley of the Forth, having taken fire, burned for years, and long resisted all the attempts to extinguish it. Miners frequently worked in the vicinity of this burning mine, when the heat of the air was nearly equal to that of boiling water. They pursued their labour in this torrid atmosphere, without seeming injury to their health, or other inconvenience than continued perspiration: and many more examples could be given of the power of the animal frame to resist extreme heat, while the temperature of the blood and other fluids within the body remained without sensible change.

      As the vital powers of the animal enable the body to resist intense heat, so they enable it to resist excessive cold. At degrees of temperature at which all the fluids of the dead body would be frozen, the living body retains its natural temperature, and performs its wonted functions. Even in these latitudes of ours, there every year occur periods of cold, when the temperature of the external air is below that at which water congeals, and at which all the fluids of the body would freeze were they separated from it. In countries of the higher latitudes, the mean temperature of the year falls below the melting point of ice, and yet such countries are inhabited by numerous animals. The recent voyages of intrepid travellers, the Parrys, the Franklins, the Rosses, and others, have shewn that, at a degree of cold below that at which mercury freezes, the human beings subjected to it can take their wonted exercise and perform their accustomed duties. Nay, there are cases to shew that certain animals may have the great mass of their fluids frozen, and yet be preserved from death. Fishes have been dragged up from the circumpolar seas, which froze, as the nets were in the course of being raised, into masses so hard that they might have been shivered to pieces by a stroke, and yet they would recover if thawed. A common eel has been frozen like a piece of ice, and been conveyed in a state of torpor thousands of miles, and then been restored to its state of activity by the application of warmth.

      But there are degrees of cold to which the frame of certain animals in their state of activity is unsuited. Nature here provides a remedy by rendering them torpid in the absence of necessary heat. Thus innumerable insects are rendered insensible to the action of the external air during the winter season. In the case of the animals termed hybernating, sensation becomes suspended, the fluids of the body circulate more slowly, and respiration and all the vital actions become less active. The torpor of the creature is like death rather than sleep, and yet enough of vital action remains to preserve it from the external agents, which, in its condition of activity, would destroy it. It remains as if dead, but as soon as the air recovers the due warmth, the vital functions of the animal regain their powers, and it awakens from its long trance. The dormouse, the marmot, the hedgehog, the bat, are with us familiar examples of animals that undergo this state of winter sleep, during which they are so dead to feeling that they may be tossed about, nay, sometimes have the limbs separated from the body, or the most vital parts exposed, without their exhibiting symptoms of sensation. The swallow, which migrates to us in the early part of summer, quits us on the approach of the colder season. But some, too young or too feeble for flight, remain behind. These betake themselves to holes in walls and the earth, to remain in their state of slumber till the return of the warmer season shall call them again into life. And other migratory birds, as the cuckoo and the corn-rail, are sometimes overtaken by this sleep of winter before they have been able to make their periodical flight, during which they may be tossed about without their moving a joint of the body.

      The lower tribes of animals, whose sensations are obtuse, present examples yet more striking than the higher tribes of the power of the living principle to preserve the animal organism from the action of external agents. Many species will survive the most cruel torments, and revive after a long period of seeming death. Certain species of vibrio have been so dessicated by the sun that they have become like dust, and, after twenty years, have been restored to life by sprinkling them with a little water.

      Of the power of the living body to resist those agents which would otherwise act upon and decompose it, an example is furnished by a substance, the production of the body itself. The gastric juice is secreted from the interior of the stomach, and is employed to dissolve the food which is received into the alimentary canal. This substance possesses a prodigious solvent power, yet it never acts upon the living organs with which it comes into contact in the body, although capable of dissolving all animal matters when deprived of life. Numerous parasitic creatures are formed to live in the stomachs of other animals. When alive they resist all the actions of the powerful solvent by which they are surrounded, but the moment life is extinct in them, they become subject to its powers, and undergo decomposition.

      Examples, too, of the property of bodies having life to resist those agents which would destroy them in their dead state, may be everywhere drawn from the vegetable kingdom. All the hardier forest

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