Animal Studies: A Text-book of Elementary Zoology for Use in High Schools and Colleges

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D. Appleton, 1903 - 459 páginas

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Página 280 - There is no exception to the rule that every organic being naturally increases at so high a rate, that, if not destroyed, the earth would soon be covered by the progeny of a single pair. Even slow-breeding man has doubled in twenty-five years, and at this rate, in less than a thousand years, there would literally not be standing room for his progeny.
Página 209 - Its summer plumage so exactly harmonizes with the lichen-coloured stones among which it delights to sit, that a person may walk through a flock of them without seeing a single bird; while in winter its white plumage is an almost equal protection.
Página 360 - He cannot be mistaken for any other, and his flaming vest and blue stockings show that he does not court concealment. He is very abundant in the damp woods, and I was convinced he was uneatable so soon as I made his acquaintance and saw the happy sense of security with which he hopped about. I took a few specimens home with me, and tried my fowls and ducks with them ; but none would touch them. At last, by throwing down pieces of meat, for which there was a great competition amongst them, I managed...
Página 408 - Mono had never seen an egg, but his inherited impulses bore a direct relation to feeding on eggs, just as the heredity of Macacus taught the others how to crack nuts or to peel fruit. To each of these monkeys we gave an egg, the first that any of them had ever seen. The baby monkey, Mono, being of an egg-eating race, devoured his egg by the operation of instinct or inherited habit. On being given the egg for the first time, he cracked it with Iris upper teeth, making a hole in it, and sucked out...
Página 359 - In the woods around Santo Domingo there are many frogs. Some are green or brown, and imitate green or dead leaves, and live amongst foliage. Others are dull earth-coloured, and hide in holes and under logs.
Página 281 - The elephant is reckoned the slowest breeder of all known animals, and I have taken some pains to estimate its probable minimum rate of natural increase; it will be safest to assume that it begins breeding when thirty years old, and goes on breeding till ninety years old, bringing forth six young in the interval, and surviving till one hundred years old ; if this be so, after a period of from 740 to 750 years there would be nearly nineteen million elephants alive, descended from the first pair.
Página 192 - Pipidce, or Surinam Toads, there are rarely teeth, and the mouth is destitute of a tongue. A singular and hideous species (Pipa Americana) is the best known, and it inhabits Brazil and Surinam. In this curious Amphibian the eggs are placed by the male on the back of the female, in the integument of which, in cell-like cavities, the eggs are hatched and the young developed.
Página 318 - ... and varied businesses ; and of the tireless persistence of the workers until they fall exhausted and dying in the performance of their duties. The community, it is important to note, is a persistent or continuous one. The workers do not live long, the spring broods usually not over two or three months, and the fall broods not more than six or eight months ; but new ones are hatching while the old ones are dying, and the community as a whole always persists. The queen may live several years, perhaps...
Página 316 - Finally, a small mass of food is put into the cell, and the cell is 'capped' or covered with wax. Each larva, after eating all its food, in two or three days more changes into a pupa, which lies quiescent without eating for thirteen days, when it changes into a full-grown bee. The new bee breaks open the cap of the cell with its jaws and comes out into the hive, ready to take up its share of the work for the community. "In a few cases, however, the life history is different. The nurses...

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