Animals Books

MAN. In this collection, like Linnæus, we begin with man as undoubtedly an animal, as opposed to a vegetable or mineral. Like Professor Owen, we are inclined to fancy he is well entitled to separate rank from even the Linnæan order, Primates, and to have more systematic honour conferred on him than what Cuvier allowed him. That great French naturalist placed man in a section separate from his... more...

Last Bull That was what two grim old sachems of the Dacotahs had dubbed him; and though his official title, on the lists of the Zoölogical Park, was “Kaiser,” the new and more significant name had promptly supplanted it. The Park authorities—people of imagination and of sentiment, as must all be who would deal successfully with wild animals—had felt at once that the name aptly embodied the... more...

CHAPTER 1. SUPPLY AND DEMAND. For years there has been a belief that the supply of fur-bearing animals would soon be inadequate to the demand. This belief is well founded and is apparent when the fact is known that the natural haunts and homes of the fur-producing animals are becoming less each year. The draining of swamps and marshes is destroying the homes and breeding places of muskrat and to a... more...

INTRODUCTION Somethirty years ago, while out on one of his landlooking trips in the woods of Northern Michigan, my father came upon a little lake which seemed to him the loveliest that he had ever seen, though he had visited many in the course of his explorations. The wild ponds are very apt to be shallow and muddy, with low, marshy shores; but this one was deep and clear, and its high banks were... more...

CHAPTER I THE LITTLE FURRY ONES THAT SLIDE DOWN HILL In the brown, balsam-smelling log cabin on the shores of Silverwater, loveliest and loneliest of wilderness lakes, the Babe's great thirst for information seemed in a fair way to be satisfied. Young as he was, and city-born, the lure of the wild had nevertheless already caught him, and the information that he thirsted for so insatiably was all... more...

OUR PETS. This is Pol-ly's own cat, Top-sy. She looks ve-ry prim and quiet; but if you play with her, you will find she is a ve-ry mer-ry lit-tle cat. She will jump up-on the ta-ble at break-fast, and run off with Pol-ly's toast; and if mam-ma be wri-ting a let-ter, Top-sy will steal soft-ly a-long the arm of the so-fa, and rub her paw o-ver the last word mam-ma has writ-ten, and make a great... more...

Some of the Pleistocene mammals from San Josecito Cave, near Aramberri, Nuevo León, México, collected by field parties of the California Institute of Technology under the direction of the late Professor Chester Stock, have been reported previously (see Furlong, 1943; Cushing, 1945; Stock, 1950; Hooper, 1952; Findley, 1953; Stock, 1953; Handley, 1955; Jackway, 1958). In 1950, Professor Stock loaned a... more...

I If his father had been a brown bear and his mother a badger, the result in outward appearance would have been Gulo, or something very much like him. But not all the crossing in the world could have accounted for his character; that came straight from the Devil, his master. Gulo, however, was not a cross. He was himself, Gulo, the wolverine, alias glutton, alias carcajou, alias quick-hatch, alias... more...

I. MEGALEEP THE WANDERER. Megaleep is the big woodland caribou of the northern wilderness. His Milicete name means The Wandering One, but it ought to mean the Mysterious and the Changeful as well. If you hear that he is bold and fearless, that is true; and if you are told that he is shy and wary and inapproachable, that is also true. For he is never the same two days in succession. At once shy and... more...

IMPORTANCE OF RODENT GROUPS. As the serious character of the depredations by harmful rodents is recognized, State, Federal, and private expenditures for their control increase year by year. These depredations include not only the attacks by introduced rats and mice on food materials stored in granaries, warehouses, commercial establishments, docks, and private houses, but also, particularly in the... more...